BLUF: For more than a quarter century, Iran’s protest movements have moved in a pretty clear direction. What started in the late 1990s largely as demands to reform the Islamic Republic has steadily become something much more fundamental: a growing rejection of the system itself. The 2009 Green Movement challenged the legitimacy of the political order. Bloody Aban in 2019 broke much of what remained of the social contract. The 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising became a generational and cultural revolt, and the nationwide protests of January 2026 pushed things further still, with demonstrators increasingly calling for the end of clerical rule itself. AP’s review of Iran’s protest history is a useful reminder that this has not been one protest movement. It has been a long political evolution.

Iran now enters another potentially combustible period. The United States and Israel continue tightening military and economic pressure through Operation Epic Fury and Operation Economic Fury, while Tehran’s leadership responds with the familiar mix of threats, missile rhetoric and pressure around the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, ordinary Iranians are dealing with inflation, sanctions, war damage, declining trade and an economy that was hardly a model of good management before any of this started. The U.S. Treasury has continued expanding the economic pressure campaign, while Iranian officials themselves are reportedly worried that additional economic pain could reignite unrest. (U.S. Treasury)

That may be the irony Tehran is missing. The regime is looking outward at Washington and Jerusalem while sitting on top of one of the biggest political powder kegs in the Middle East at home. There are more than 80 million Iranians inside the country, and a very large percentage of them seem to have concluded that the problem is not simply one bad president, one bad election or one bad economic policy.

This Did Not Start in 2026

One mistake outsiders repeatedly make with Iran is treating each uprising as an isolated event. A protest erupts, the regime kills or arrests enough people to regain control, the streets go quiet, and Washington more or less moves on until the next explosion. That approach misses the larger pattern. What Iran has experienced since the late 1990s is better understood as a 25-plus-year political evolution.

The grievances have changed over time. So have the triggers, the slogans, the cities involved and the people participating. But the general direction has been consistent: more Iranians have moved away from asking the Islamic Republic to reform itself and toward questioning why the Islamic Republic should exist in its current form at all. That distinction is important because it tells us a lot more about the regime’s long-term vulnerability than simply counting how many protests happened in a particular year.

1999: Reform the System

The July 1999 student uprising was one of the first major warning signs. Students originally protested the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam, but a violent attack on Tehran University dormitories quickly transformed a limited political dispute into the largest anti-government unrest Iran had experienced since the early years of the Islamic Republic. At least three people were killed and roughly 1,200 detained. (AP)

What stands out today is how limited the demands were compared with what we hear in Iran now. President Mohammad Khatami had come to power promising reform, and a meaningful part of Iranian society still believed that the Islamic Republic might be made more open and accountable. Students wanted freer media, greater political space, fewer restrictions and some ability to hold government officials responsible for what they did. They were mostly arguing about how the system operated, not yet demanding that the whole system disappear.

The regime responded with repression, which was also an early lesson in how reform works in the Islamic Republic: it is tolerated right up until it threatens the people who actually hold power. Iranian society did not forget that lesson. It would come back in a much bigger way a decade later.

2009: The Target Becomes the Regime

The Green Movement was different because it began inside the system and then started challenging the legitimacy of the system itself. After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection, millions of Iranians took to the streets demanding to know, “Where is my vote?” Initially, this still sounded like a dispute over an election. As the demonstrations continued and the government responded with violence, the anger moved upward.

It was no longer only directed at Ahmadinejad or some election official nobody outside Iran could name. Protesters increasingly challenged Ali Khamenei and the entire power structure sitting behind the election. “Death to the dictator” became a common refrain, and Reuters documented protesters openly chanting it in Tehran while attacking Khamenei’s legitimacy. (Reuters)

That was a bigger psychological transition than it may look like in hindsight. The Islamic Republic had spent decades presenting the Supreme Leader as something above ordinary politics: guardian of the revolution, ultimate authority, supposedly insulated from the petty dysfunction of day-to-day government. By 2009, millions of Iranians were effectively saying that the problem did not stop with the president. It went straight to the top.

There was also some historical irony in the slogans. For decades, the regime had institutionalized Marg bar Amrika — “Death to America” — as almost part of the official soundtrack of revolutionary Iran. Eventually protesters started borrowing the regime’s language and redirecting it: “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” and increasingly Marg bar Jomhuri-ye Eslami — Death to the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic spent decades teaching Iranians how to chant “Death to” their enemies. A growing number of Iranians simply changed the target.

2017–2018: The Revolt Moves Beyond Tehran’s Intellectual Class

The next warning came from somewhere even more uncomfortable for the regime: the provinces. The 2017 and 2018 protests initially grew out of food prices, unemployment, government subsidies and basic economic frustration. Demonstrations then spread from Mashhad and other cities, while slogans increasingly turned against the political establishment itself. (AP)

That mattered because the regime could no longer easily write off dissent as a bunch of wealthy, westernized students in Tehran complaining about politics. The anger was showing up among workers, small merchants, lower-income families, religious communities and people living in provincial cities that had historically provided at least part of the revolution’s political base. The demographic map of opposition was getting wider.

The economic and political complaints also began merging. Why is inflation destroying our savings? Why is infrastructure deteriorating? Why are jobs disappearing? Why is Iran spending money in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere while Iranian families struggle at home? Those are economic questions on the surface, but when people ask them long enough, they tend to arrive at a political answer: the people running the system.

Bloody Aban: When the Social Contract Broke

Then came November 2019: Bloody November, or Aban 1398. The immediate trigger was a sudden increase in gasoline prices, but gasoline was really just the match. Years of corruption, economic mismanagement, sanctions, inequality and resentment toward the ruling elite had already piled up underneath it.

Protests spread rapidly across the country. The government shut down much of Iran’s internet access, security forces opened fire, and the crackdown was brutal. Amnesty International has documented more than 300 killings. A Reuters investigation based on Iranian government sources put the toll at approximately 1,500 people in less than two weeks. (Reuters)

The precise number remains disputed, in no small part because the regime that carried out the crackdown also did its best to shut down communications while it was happening. But arguing forever over whether the correct number is several hundred or closer to 1,500 can obscure the more basic point: the Islamic Republic demonstrated that it was prepared to kill a very large number of its own citizens very quickly if that was what staying in power required.

The slogans were also harder to dismiss as requests for policy reform. “Death to the dictator.” “Death to the Islamic Republic.” “No Gaza, no Lebanon, my life for Iran.” Large numbers of Iranians were not asking Tehran to become slightly more efficient at governing. They were asking why an ideological government was spending so much energy and money on revolutionary causes abroad while ordinary Iranians struggled at home.

Bloody Aban was an inflection point because the regime showed exactly how far it was willing to go. Iranian society saw it, absorbed it and carried that memory forward. The next generation would challenge the government on something even more fundamental: its right to control everyday life.

Mahsa Amini Changed the Equation Again

On September 16, 2022, 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating compulsory hijab rules. A later United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that her death was unlawful and resulted from physical violence while she was in state custody. (Reuters)

What followed became the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, and it was different from what came before. This was not only a political protest. It was social, cultural and generational at the same time. Women removed their hijabs. Teenage girls confronted government officials. University students challenged security forces. Young men joined them, while protesters burned images of Khamenei and openly targeted the symbols of the Islamic Republic. Reuters documented chants including “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei” and “We want regime change.” (Reuters)

More than 500 people were ultimately reported killed and tens of thousands detained. (AP) Tehran eventually regained control of the streets, but I would not confuse that with regaining control of society. One of the clearest examples is compulsory hijab. The law remains on the books and the state still has police, courts and prisons, yet huge numbers of Iranian women simply stopped cooperating.

That kind of civil disobedience creates a different problem for an authoritarian government. A protest march can be broken up. An organizer can be arrested. It is much harder to arrest a culture that has decided it no longer recognizes the government’s right to tell people how to live.

January 2026: The System Reaches Another Threshold

The uprising that began in late December 2025 and exploded in January 2026 started in a place anyone familiar with Iranian history should pay attention to: the bazaar. Shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed businesses as the rial collapsed, inflation surged and economic conditions deteriorated. Economic protest quickly became political revolt, which by now is almost a recurring pattern in Iran.

Within days, demonstrations had spread across the country. The language increasingly moved beyond complaints about prices or the currency and toward demands for an end to clerical rule. Amnesty International says the crackdown on January 8 and 9 included massacres in which the death toll reached into the thousands and described January 2026 as the deadliest period of repression it has documented in Iran in decades. (Amnesty International)

The final casualty numbers remain contested because Tehran again imposed a communications blackout. By July, HRANA said it had documented more than 7,000 deaths and more than 50,000 arrests, while Iran’s own government acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths. (AP) Whatever number history eventually settles on, the political progression is what stands out: 1999 was largely about reform; 2009 challenged legitimacy; 2019 rejected the economic and political bargain; 2022 challenged the social and ideological order; and by 2026 large numbers of people were openly rejecting the Islamic Republic itself.

That is a remarkable political evolution in barely one generation.

The 80/20 Problem

I have often described Iran using a rough 80/20 framework. It is not supposed to be scientific precision, and polling under an authoritarian government always deserves some skepticism. But the broader premise is not pulled out of thin air. A 2022 survey by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN research group found 81% of respondents inside Iran would vote “No” to the Islamic Republic in a free referendum, while later research still found a large majority opposed continuation of the existing system. (GAMAAN)

My shorthand is that perhaps 80% of the country wants some version of fundamental change while roughly 20% remains tied, directly or indirectly, to preserving the current system. More important, that 20% is not one group. There is a genuine ideological hard core made up of revolutionary fundamentalists, committed clerical ideologues, senior elements of the security apparatus, Basij and IRGC figures who actually believe in Khomeini’s original revolutionary project.

Then there are what I call the hardline lights. They are not moderates, despite the West’s strange habit of repeatedly finding “moderates” inside a system where almost everyone with meaningful power has spent years proving otherwise. These are businessmen, political insiders, bureaucrats, oligarchs, IRGC economic beneficiaries and people tied into patronage networks. Their politics may be less theological and a little more practical: keep the money, keep the influence and, preferably, stay alive long enough to enjoy both.

That distinction matters because true believers and kleptocrats do not necessarily behave the same way when a regime starts facing an existential crisis.

After Khamenei: Hardliners Took the Wheel

Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, and his son Mojtaba Khamenei was subsequently installed as Iran’s third Supreme Leader. Reuters reported that the Revolutionary Guards forced through his selection, overriding objections from political and clerical pragmatists. Sources also suggested the outcome could produce a more aggressive foreign policy and even harsher internal repression, with the IRGC exercising unprecedented influence over the state. (Reuters)

Mojtaba’s early rhetoric has not exactly suggested a new era of moderation. Within days of assuming power, he reportedly rejected de-escalation proposals and insisted that the United States and Israel first be “brought to their knees.” (Reuters) So much for the next great Iranian moderate.

The larger point is that the Islamic Republic appears to have moved further toward the Revolutionary Guard and the faction most willing to absorb enormous punishment in pursuit of ideological survival. That is where the martyrdom mindset becomes strategically dangerous. A kleptocrat usually wants to preserve his money and survive. A true believer may be much more willing to burn down the house if he thinks history or God will vindicate him. If pressure inside Iran reaches another breaking point, that difference may become very important.

Why This Fall Matters

September marks four years since Mahsa Amini’s death. Anniversaries matter in Iran, as do funerals, forty-day mourning cycles and symbols that can quickly turn personal grief into political mobilization. I am not predicting an uprising on September 16; revolutions are not scheduled like conference calls. But the conditions going into the fall of 2026 are worth watching closely.

Iran is dealing simultaneously with military damage, sanctions, maritime pressure, declining oil revenue, weakened trade, a battered currency and extraordinary inflation. Reuters recently reported annual inflation reaching 66% in July, with food prices up 128% year over year. Iranian political insiders told Reuters that the government’s larger concern was not simply economic pain but the possibility that worsening hardship could reignite nationwide unrest. (Reuters)

The regime’s own behavior is also telling. Hossein Taeb, one of the architects of earlier crackdowns, has been placed in charge of the Basij. Iran International reported on leaked audio from a closed Basij cyber meeting in which officials openly discussed the possibility of another round of protests, monitoring anti-government activity and concerns that individual Basij members could be identified online. (Iran International)

When the people responsible for crushing the next uprising are already discussing the next uprising, it is worth paying attention.

The Split That Could Matter Most

The single most important variable may eventually be whether the regime’s hardline lights decide they are unwilling to sink with the ideological hard core. Authoritarian systems often look much stronger from the outside than they really are. Security services stay loyal until parts of them stop being loyal. Business elites support the system until supporting the system threatens their money, their families or their ability to get out.

That is why the real inflection point may not simply be another million people in the streets. It could be another million people in the streets at exactly the same time that meaningful fractures start appearing inside the regime. Renewed protests combined with worsening Economic Fury, continued kinetic pressure, disrupted oil revenue and elite doubts about whether the leadership can survive indefinitely would create a very different situation from 2009, 2019 or even 2022.

At that point, insiders may face a fairly brutal choice. They can go down defending Khomeini’s ideological experiment, or they can look for a way to preserve themselves in whatever comes next. That does not mean Jeffersonian democracy appears the following morning. A post-Islamic Republic Iran could initially look much messier, perhaps something closer to a Moscow-style kleptocratic authoritarian system: less ideological, still corrupt and security-heavy, but willing to loosen social restrictions and normalize relations with the Gulf, Europe and eventually the United States in exchange for sanctions relief and investment.

That would not be the outcome many Iranian democrats want, but it could still represent a major break from revolutionary theocracy. History rarely gives anyone a clean transition.

REGIME CHANGE WARNING: Many people (myself included) have regularly noted that we need regime change in Iran. We are already in the midst of regime change. As I have noted in my prior write-ups, a large swath of Iranian hardline leadership was taken out by Israeli and U.S. strikes in March 2026, so technically we are in the midst of regime change. Right now, the HARDLINE radicals who have a martyr’s mindset are in 100% control. If the hardline-lights take over, the people won’t have free reign on deciding their own future, and we are likely going to end up with “less bad” and not as religiously radical a band in charge.

On the downside, if the Hardliners fend off all challengers, the regime we end up with could be as bad or if not worse than what we have. Cautionary tale to the “Iran doves/moderates”: if we know this regime is driving the region off the cliff and we don’t know which way to steer to avoid doom, doing nothing is not an option either. So for now, I still remain wedded to what I have long said we need: IRAN REGIME CHANGE (From within, not abroad)

Escalate to De-Escalate, From Both Directions

This also comes back to something I have written about repeatedly: escalate to de-escalate. Washington and Jerusalem are increasing military and economic pressure because they believe additional pain will create leverage. Tehran is doing exactly the same thing in reverse. The Strait of Hormuz, missile attacks, threats against Gulf infrastructure, proxy warfare, oil prices, shipping insurance and gasoline prices are not separate issues. They are instruments in the same negotiation.

That negotiation is taking place with bombs, markets, sanctions and information simultaneously. It is irregular warfare wrapped around kinetic warfare, and a large portion of it is cognitive warfare. Iran does not need to defeat the United States military, and despite the propaganda coming out of Tehran, I suspect even the IRGC understands that would be a fairly ambitious project. What it needs to do is convince Americans that continuing the confrontation costs more than whatever Washington hopes to gain.

That means images of burning ships, rising oil prices, higher gasoline prices, nervous Gulf allies and a steady drumbeat of stories arguing that the war is too expensive or cannot be won. It means American politicians looking toward November and worrying about voters. Reuters has reported that fuel prices and the duration of the conflict are already becoming politically relevant ahead of the U.S. midterms while Tehran continues threatening offensive action around Hormuz. (Reuters)

My assessment is that Tehran increasingly sees time itself as a weapon: survive the pressure, escalate enough to raise the political cost for Washington, avoid the blow that actually breaks the regime and push the pain toward the U.S. midterms. Then hope a politically weakened Trump becomes more cautious afterward. It is a logical strategy from Tehran’s perspective, but it may also be a serious miscalculation because Iran is acting as though this game has only two players.

The Missing Player Is the Iranian People

The United States has military power. Israel has military and intelligence capabilities Iran has now experienced firsthand. Tehran still has missiles, asymmetric tools, proxies, geography and the ability to create serious problems for global energy markets. But there is a fourth source of power in this conflict that almost every geopolitical model tends to underweight: the Iranian people themselves.

For more than 25 years, opposition to the Islamic Republic has become broader, deeper and more openly directed at the regime. The clerical state has survived every round, but each time survival has required more arrests, more censorship, more internet shutdowns, more executions and more bloodshed. Every crackdown creates more families with a personal grievance. Every prison sentence creates another network of people with a reason to oppose the state.

That is not the same thing as stability. It is accumulated pressure, and eventually the question becomes whether the next protest collides with conditions that earlier movements did not have: severe economic crisis, war fatigue, elite fractures and weakening cohesion inside the security apparatus. The next uprising could certainly be suppressed again. Anyone confidently predicting the regime’s imminent collapse should remember that authoritarian systems can survive astonishing amounts of dysfunction.

But if regime change ultimately does come, I continue to believe it must come principally from within Iran. The United States cannot bomb democracy into existence. Israel cannot manufacture political legitimacy for an opposition movement, and Washington cannot select Iran’s next government and expect the Iranian people to accept it.

That does not mean the outside world has no role. The West can help keep communications open, expose corruption, identify officials responsible for atrocities, support circumvention technology when Tehran shuts down the internet and pressure the financial networks that keep the regime functioning. It can help Iranians communicate with one another and make it harder for the government to carry out a massacre in darkness.

It can also make clear to people inside the system that refusing illegal or murderous orders does not automatically mean they have no future. That is very different from externally imposed regime change, and it is a much more sustainable approach.

This Time, “Help Is on Its Way” Has to Mean Something

There is one final lesson Washington should keep in mind. During the January uprising, President Trump publicly told Iranian protesters to continue demonstrating and declared that “help is on its way.” He never clearly explained what that help meant. (Reuters)

That may sound like ordinary political rhetoric sitting in Washington. It sounds very different to someone standing in an Iranian street facing men with rifles. Words matter when people may die believing them, and the Iranian people have already paid an extraordinary price for challenging this government. If the next inflection point comes this fall, next year or five years from now, Washington needs to be careful about making promises it cannot or does not intend to keep.

Supporting the Iranian people does not mean sending American troops into Tehran. In almost every plausible scenario, it should not. There are much more useful forms of support: communications technology, cyber assistance, intelligence, information operations, targeted economic pressure on regime networks, documenting those ordering killings and helping Iranians get information in and out of the country when the government tries to shut the doors.

It also means watching the right things. Watch the bazaar, the universities and the women who continue ignoring compulsory hijab laws. Watch the workers, the provincial cities, ethnic minorities, the Basij and the IRGC business class. Most importantly, watch for the first meaningful cracks between the people who still genuinely believe in the revolution and those who decide they would rather keep their villas, businesses and children overseas than become martyrs for somebody else’s ideological experiment.

The Islamic Republic remains fixated on America and Israel, and given the military pressure it faces, that is understandable. But after more than 25 years of protests, crackdowns, arrests and steadily escalating resistance, Tehran might want to spend a little more time looking over its shoulder. The most consequential threat to the regime may still be the one standing directly behind it: the Iranian people themselves.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): The biggest lesson coming out of the Iran conflict may not actually be about Iran. It is about the changing economics of warfare and what happens when emerging technology begins democratizing military capabilities that were once reserved almost exclusively for major powers.

In many ways, this is a continuation of what we have already watched unfold in Ukraine. An underpowered “David” has used drones, software, commercial technology, rapid battlefield innovation and private-sector ingenuity to impose extraordinary costs on a much larger Russian military. Ukraine has not eliminated Russia’s advantages in manpower, missiles, aircraft or industrial capacity, but it has repeatedly demonstrated that technology and innovation can narrow the gap between a smaller military and a much larger conventional power.

For most of the modern era, advanced military power belonged overwhelmingly to countries capable of spending billions of dollars building sophisticated aircraft, warships, missiles, sensors and command-and-control infrastructure. That advantage is not disappearing, nor are aircraft carriers, submarines, bombers or advanced fighters suddenly obsolete. But autonomy, artificial intelligence, inexpensive sensors, commercial communications, advanced manufacturing and widely available components are rapidly lowering the cost of creating meaningful military effects.

Countries such as Iran, smaller states, proxies and increasingly sophisticated non-state actors can now threaten platforms costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars with systems costing a tiny fraction of that amount. The United States and its allies simply cannot build a sustainable long-term strategy around answering every inexpensive drone with a multimillion-dollar interceptor or every maritime threat with another billion-dollar warship.

The answer is not abandoning exquisite platforms. We will still need submarines, advanced fighters, bombers, missile defense, aircraft carriers and traditional naval combatants. The real opportunity is building a much broader force architecture around them that incorporates autonomous mass, distributed sensors, commercial intelligence, private-sector innovation, resilient manufacturing and systems capable of evolving at software speed rather than traditional procurement speed.

That last point is especially important. Almost a decade ago, when I helped launch IronGate Capital Advisors (www.irongatevc.com), defense technology was still a relatively unfashionable corner of venture capital. Our thesis was fairly straightforward: we believed a new era of great-power competition was coming, explicitly calling it Cold War 2.0 when docile DC held onto the less triggering phrase “Great Power Competition”. Private technology would play a far greater role in national security, and government alone would not be able to finance or innovate its way through the challenge. I think the events of the last several years, particularly Ukraine and now Iran, have largely validated that thesis.

Iran is simply giving us the latest preview of where all of this is heading.

Iran Is a Case Study, Not the Whole Story

In a recent Irregular Warfare Initiative discussion on the geoeconomics of the Iran conflict, we kept coming back to something I have written about for a while: the wars and geopolitical competitions we tend to treat as separate increasingly are not separate. Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, global supply chains, energy markets, cyber operations and information warfare are increasingly overlapping pieces of a much larger competition.

I have referred to this broader environment as Cold War 2.0, but the analogy only goes so far. The next Cold War will not simply look like the previous one with newer weapons. It is becoming a comprehensive battle of systems in which military power remains enormously important, but kinetic warfare represents only one element of a much wider struggle.

Economic pressure, sanctions, technology, private capital, commercial intelligence, supply chains, critical minerals, information operations, cyber capabilities, proxies and control of global infrastructure increasingly matter alongside traditional military force. That is also why irregular warfare has moved back toward the center of national security.

Ukraine has been one of the clearest demonstrations of this shift. Russia entered the war with enormous conventional advantages, yet Ukraine has repeatedly leveraged commercial drones, digital networks, open-source intelligence, software and rapid innovation to attack Russian forces in ways that would have been extraordinarily difficult for a smaller military only a generation ago. It is a modern version of David trying to neutralize Goliath’s advantages not by matching him weapon for weapon, but by changing the economics and character of the contest.

Our adversaries understand they do not necessarily have to defeat the United States conventionally. They can instead impose costs, create political friction, exploit economic vulnerabilities, fracture alliances and make the exercise of traditional U.S. military superiority progressively more expensive.

Iran has spent decades refining versions of this model. Tehran cannot economically match the United States carrier for carrier, fighter for fighter or missile-defense battery for missile-defense battery, so it has invested heavily in drones, missiles, proxies, cyber operations, information warfare, maritime harassment and strategic geography.

The objective is also not necessarily to win a battle in the way Americans traditionally define victory. For the Iranian regime, preserving the regime, surviving another round of escalation and remaining capable of imposing additional costs can itself become a strategic objective. That distinction came up repeatedly in our discussion: Iran views this as a struggle for regime survival, while the United States is often operating with narrower and sometimes changing objectives.

That asymmetry in objectives matters. Increasingly, so does the asymmetry in cost.

The Economics of Warfare Are Changing

This is the element of the current conflict that deserves far more attention. The economics of warfare are becoming just as consequential as the technology itself.

An inexpensive autonomous aircraft does not have to outperform an F-35. A small unmanned surface vessel does not have to defeat a destroyer in a traditional naval engagement, and a cheap loitering munition does not need the sophistication of a cruise missile. It simply needs to create enough risk that the defender is forced to respond.

Ukraine has already demonstrated this dynamic on a massive scale. A country fighting a much larger conventional military has used relatively inexpensive drones and commercially derived technologies to destroy or threaten tanks, artillery, aircraft, logistics nodes, warships and strategic infrastructure. Ukraine did not invent asymmetric warfare, but it has dramatically accelerated the marriage between irregular warfare and low-cost autonomous technology.

When one side can repeatedly spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and compel the other side to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in response, that exchange ratio eventually becomes strategically important. During our podcast discussion, I made the point that Iran and Ukraine are obviously very different cases, but both demonstrate the same technological trend: relatively inexpensive autonomous systems can allow a materially weaker actor to impose enormous costs on a much larger military.

This does not mean cheap drones suddenly make advanced military systems irrelevant. A Shahed cannot perform the missions of a stealth bomber. A small USV does not replace a Virginia-class submarine, and a quadcopter cannot provide air superiority.

But that is also the wrong comparison.

The disruption occurs when inexpensive platforms begin taking over specific missions that previously required much more expensive systems. Surveillance, reconnaissance, communications relay, target detection, electronic sensing, mine detection, logistics, persistent maritime presence and increasingly strike missions can all migrate toward lower-cost autonomous systems.

That is how technology frequently disrupts mature industries. The new product does not replace the incumbent platform in one shot. It starts stripping away individual functions until the economic rationale for the old architecture begins to change.

Some twentieth-century military platforms will remain indispensable for decades. But certain twentieth-century force structures may become economically obsolete much sooner, because missions once concentrated aboard a handful of exquisite platforms can increasingly be distributed across hundreds or thousands of cheaper systems.

Instead of asking whether one autonomous vessel can replace a destroyer, the better question is whether 50 or 100 autonomous vessels operating around a destroyer can dramatically extend its sensing range, increase its survivability, complicate enemy targeting and allow it to remain farther away from danger. That is a much more consequential question for future force design.

The Collision of AI and Autonomy Changes the Equation Again

There is another technological shift layered on top of the falling cost of hardware: the collision between artificial intelligence and autonomy.

Autonomy by itself is already transformative because it allows machines to perform tasks without placing a human operator physically inside the platform. AI makes autonomy far more powerful by improving how those systems perceive their environment, process information, prioritize data and coordinate with other systems.

Again, Ukraine has been a laboratory for much of this change. The war has demonstrated how quickly commercially derived technologies can move from experimentation to battlefield use, how rapidly operators can iterate on platforms, and how software can increasingly become as important as the airframe or vehicle carrying it. The cycle of innovation, countermeasure and adaptation is happening far faster than traditional defense procurement systems were designed to accommodate.

The real disruption comes when inexpensive autonomous hardware, AI-enabled software and large amounts of commercial data begin operating together. Instead of a human operator controlling every individual drone, the long-term trend is toward humans supervising networks of increasingly capable systems. One operator may eventually manage dozens of assets performing surveillance, communications, logistics, electronic warfare or other missions across air, surface and subsurface domains.

This is where the economics become particularly disruptive. The cost of adding another sailor, pilot or crew is significant and recurring. Software can scale very differently. If autonomy allows us to distribute capability across more platforms while AI helps manage the resulting complexity, the relationship between military capability, manpower and cost starts changing fundamentally.

That is one reason the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59 is so important. It was established specifically to integrate unmanned systems and AI into Fifth Fleet operations, with maritime domain awareness and deterrence among its stated objectives. The Navy has since demonstrated extended unmanned operations, weapons employment from unmanned vessels and autonomous launch and recovery of aerial systems from unmanned surface platforms.

What we are watching is not simply the introduction of another class of weapon. It is the early construction of a different military architecture.

The West Cannot Win a Cost-Imposition Contest This Way

One of our biggest vulnerabilities is that the United States still has a tendency to solve military problems with exquisite military solutions. That approach works brilliantly when the economics are in our favor. It becomes much less attractive when an adversary deliberately engineers the exchange ratio against us.

The current generation of Iranian drone warfare illustrates the problem. Tehran has spent years developing relatively inexpensive UAV capabilities while exploiting commercially available components and international supply chains. United Against Nuclear Iran has documented how commercially available engines, electronics and other dual-use technologies have appeared in Iranian UAV programs, including components marketed originally for civilian or hobbyist uses.

Ukraine has exposed the same economic vulnerability from the other side of the battlefield. Kyiv’s ability to impose disproportionate costs on Russia should be viewed as a strategic success for Ukraine, but also as a warning for Western militaries. If relatively inexpensive technologies can create these kinds of effects against Russia, there is no reason to assume future adversaries will not use the same logic against us.

That matters because warfare is increasingly benefiting from many of the same forces that transformed the commercial technology industry. Sensors are becoming cheaper, computing power continues to improve, software allows rapid iteration, advanced manufacturing is increasingly accessible, commercial satellite communications and imagery are broadly available, and AI is lowering the barriers to increasingly sophisticated autonomy.

Those same trends obviously create security problems because they provide new capabilities to adversaries and non-state actors. But they also represent one of America’s greatest strategic advantages if we can properly harness them.

During the podcast, Lt. Gen. Dick Newton made an important distinction. Advanced bombers, fighters and submarines remain vital to American military power, but we also have to adapt to drones, AI-enabled software, autonomous systems and the industrial base needed to manufacture them at scale. A defense acquisition process measured in years becomes increasingly mismatched against battlefield technology cycles measured in months.

This is as much an economic problem as it is a military one.

Venture Capital Saw the Gap Before Washington Could Fully Fill It

This is where the venture capital community becomes increasingly important.

When we helped launch IronGate Capital Advisors nearly a decade ago, “defense tech” did not carry the excitement it does today. Many institutional investors wanted little to do with defense. Silicon Valley had largely moved away from national security, while government procurement remained concentrated around a relatively small group of traditional contractors.

Our view was different. We believed great-power competition was returning, the lines between commercial and defense technology were breaking down, and many of the next strategically important technologies would originate in the private sector rather than government laboratories. While policymakers described China as a “near-peer competitor,” and later adopted the more politically palatable “Great Power Competition,” I have bluntly called it Cold War 2.0 since 2018.

We also believed competing in this new environment would require private capital.

Ukraine became one of the first major wartime validations of that thesis. Commercial satellite networks, venture-backed technology companies, autonomous systems, software, AI, advanced manufacturing and private-sector logistics became increasingly important to Ukraine’s ability to resist a much larger adversary. The lesson is not that private companies can replace the military. It is that modern militaries increasingly fight within an ecosystem of private technology, innovation and capital that barely existed during the last Cold War.

That thesis was never simply about building better missiles or drones. It was about developing the broader innovation ecosystem required to compete in Cold War 2.0. IronGate’s investment focus has included dual-use technologies spanning autonomy, underwater robotics, secure communications, resilient navigation, space, advanced manufacturing, critical materials, cybersecurity and supply-chain resilience.

The importance of the venture community is not that VCs suddenly know more about warfare than military commanders. We don’t. It is that private capital can assume technological and business risk in ways government frequently cannot. Venture capital can fund five competing approaches knowing four may fail. Startups can redesign a system in 12 months. Government procurement, understandably, was never designed to operate that way, and traditional programs of record can take years to make comparable architectural changes.

Those differences become enormously important as the pace of technological change accelerates. Ukraine has demonstrated what happens when a smaller military, facing a much larger adversary, is forced by necessity to innovate at wartime speed.

The larger question for the United States is whether we can learn those lessons before we find ourselves in an existential war of our own.

Private Capital Is Not Replacing the Defense Industrial Base

There is sometimes a tendency to frame this as a competition between startups and traditional defense primes. I think that framing misses the point.

The traditional defense companies build extraordinarily sophisticated systems and possess engineering, manufacturing and integration capabilities that startups often cannot replicate. We need them. The United States is not going to venture-capital its way into building a nuclear submarine fleet.

But the old model cannot remain the only model.

The future defense industrial base should look more like an ecosystem than a pyramid. Traditional primes, emerging defense companies, software firms, commercial manufacturers, venture-backed startups, universities, private equity, venture capital and government laboratories all have complementary roles.

The Ukraine war has made this especially visible. Innovation on the battlefield now sometimes occurs in weeks. Operators identify a problem, engineers build a solution, adversaries develop a countermeasure, and the cycle begins again.

That is much closer to the iterative model of the technology industry than to twentieth-century weapons procurement.

IronGate was built around the belief that private capital could help bridge these worlds. The objective was never simply to write checks into defense companies. It was to identify technologies with legitimate commercial economics that also solved real national-security problems and then connect capital, entrepreneurs, technology and government requirements.

That “dual-use” model becomes even more important in an era where advances in AI, robotics, cybersecurity, communications, space, manufacturing and energy may simultaneously transform commercial industries and military operations.

The Maritime Battlefield May Be Where This Gets Really Interesting

Most public attention understandably focuses on aerial drones because they provide dramatic footage and immediate battlefield results. I suspect, however, that maritime autonomy could ultimately prove just as disruptive, if not more consequential, to global security.

Ukraine again provides an early warning. A country that began the war without anything approaching Russia’s conventional naval power has used unmanned maritime systems and other asymmetric capabilities to challenge a much larger fleet. Whatever one thinks about the specific platforms involved, the strategic lesson is difficult to ignore: a smaller actor no longer necessarily needs a traditional navy to create meaningful naval effects.

That should have enormous implications for how we think about Iran.

Look at the geography of today’s competition: the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Eastern Mediterranean and increasingly the Caspian. These are enormous maritime spaces containing some of the most strategically important commercial shipping lanes, energy infrastructure and military operating areas in the world.

Unlike a land border, you cannot simply place a checkpoint every few miles. Persistent maritime awareness has historically required ships, aircraft, satellites, sailors and enormous amounts of money. Autonomy changes that equation.

The U.S. Navy has spent years experimenting with unmanned systems in the Middle East. Task Force 59 has integrated autonomous platforms and AI into Fifth Fleet operations, with the Navy explicitly describing the objective as a distributed network that expands how far maritime forces can see. Some unmanned vessels have already demonstrated extended operations at sea.

The real opportunity, however, extends well beyond the small explosive drone boats dominating today’s headlines.

Think Autonomous Warships, Not Just Drone Boats

Imagine a larger autonomous maritime platform capable of remaining at sea for extended periods without the personnel and operating costs associated with a conventional warship. Instead of carrying hundreds of sailors, it might carry sophisticated sensors, communications equipment, modular mission packages and potentially weapons depending on its mission.

Such a vessel could operate as a persistent maritime picket hundreds of miles forward of traditional naval forces. It could provide radar, optical, acoustic or electronic surveillance while simultaneously functioning as a communications node or data relay.

The concept becomes even more interesting when larger platforms begin supporting smaller autonomous systems. A future autonomous maritime platform might launch aerial drones, deploy smaller unmanned surface vessels, recharge or recover autonomous systems and coordinate subsurface platforms. In effect, we begin moving from the concept of a disposable drone boat toward something closer to a distributed autonomous warship or mothership.

Different platforms could eventually perform missions such as persistent ISR, communications relay, logistics, mine detection, electronic warfare, drone servicing, distributed weapons carriage or simply acting as inexpensive decoys that complicate adversary targeting.

These platforms would not necessarily replace destroyers, submarines or aircraft carriers. They would change what those expensive platforms need to do and where they need to operate.

Instead of concentrating sensors, weapons and sailors aboard a handful of extraordinarily valuable vessels, a hybrid fleet could distribute many of those functions across a much larger network. A destroyer may increasingly become less of a solitary multimission platform and more of a quarterback operating inside a constellation of autonomous systems spread across hundreds of miles of ocean.

Ukraine has already shown what happens when maritime autonomy is used asymmetrically against a larger fleet. The lesson for the United States should not simply be that we need better defenses against small USVs. The larger lesson is that autonomous maritime mass is likely to become a major component of future naval power.

That architecture is particularly relevant in places such as Hormuz.

Hormuz Demonstrates Why Maritime Mass Matters

Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. Navy in a traditional fleet engagement to create a strategic crisis. It merely needs to threaten commerce, raise insurance costs, create uncertainty, attack shipping, disrupt port activity or force Western militaries to protect thousands of commercial vessels across enormous maritime areas.

That is irregular warfare expressed through economics.

Ukraine has demonstrated a version of the same concept in the Black Sea: a smaller actor can impose disproportionate costs on a conventionally superior adversary by exploiting technology, geography and asymmetric tactics rather than trying to mirror the larger force. Iran’s geography provides a different operating environment, but the underlying economic logic is remarkably similar.

UANI’s recent maritime reporting demonstrates how important this domain has become. Its shipping analysis tracks Iranian energy exports, sanctioned vessels, commercial networks, ownership changes, flags and other characteristics associated with sanctions evasion.

The important point is broader than the precise numbers. Maritime commerce is not a side issue in the Iran conflict. It is part of the battlefield.

The sea lanes carry energy, components, sanctioned commodities, military-related materials and the money that finances everything else. Maritime security therefore cannot simply mean destroying the platform that launches the missile or drone. It also requires understanding the commercial networks financing, transporting and replenishing the adversary’s war machine.

That leads directly into another transformation receiving far less public attention than autonomous warfare.

OSINT Is Becoming Part of the Modern Arsenal

(OSINT - Open Source Intelligence) Twenty years ago, mapping an international network of tankers, shell companies, beneficial owners, flags, cargo transfers and suspicious shipping activity was largely the domain of governments and intelligence services. Today, meaningful portions of that picture can increasingly be assembled commercially.

Satellite imagery, AIS data, corporate registries, trade records, customs databases, sanctions lists, port activity, shipping histories, commercial intelligence platforms and social media now provide enormous amounts of information outside traditional intelligence channels. Artificial intelligence will increasingly help connect these disparate datasets at a scale that would have required armies of analysts only a decade ago.

Ukraine again offers an important precedent. Commercial satellite imagery, open-source geolocation, social media analysis and privately developed intelligence tools have all played meaningful roles in understanding battlefield activity. The same democratization of intelligence increasingly applies to sanctions enforcement, maritime tracking and economic warfare against Iran.

This is a major development for irregular and economic warfare.

UANI’s Ghost Armada work provides a useful example. The organization has spent years identifying vessels it believes participate in sanctions evasion involving Iranian petroleum, documenting practices such as flag hopping, shell-company creation, ownership changes, vessel renaming and manipulation of shipping identities.

More importantly, this is not OSINT for academic curiosity. Open-source analysis can create actual economic effects when the information reaches governments, banks, insurers, port operators, shipping registries and corporate compliance departments.

That demonstrates something strategically important: open-source intelligence can move from observation to economic effect.

The basic model is increasingly powerful. Identify the tanker, map the beneficial owner, identify the insurer, flag registry, port, front company and financial intermediary, and then provide those relationships to governments, financial institutions, insurers and commercial entities capable of acting against them.

That is commercial intelligence meeting economic warfare.

Follow the Component, Not Just the Missile

The same logic applies to Iran’s autonomous weapons supply chain. Iran may manufacture a drone domestically, but that does not mean every component inside that drone originated domestically.

That distinction matters enormously.

UANI has documented commercially available technology appearing in Iranian UAV programs, including engines and electronic components. This is precisely where OSINT, commercial intelligence and economic warfare begin converging.

You do not necessarily need to destroy every drone factory if you can make it substantially harder and more expensive to obtain the motors, electronics, machine tools, sensors and other components required to keep that factory operating. Likewise, you do not need to seize every sanctioned tanker if banks, ports, insurers and registries understand the commercial and legal exposure created by servicing the network.

This is another lesson that Ukraine has reinforced from the opposite direction. Modern warfare does not begin and end at the front line. Semiconductors, navigation components, communications hardware, machine tools, motors, batteries and software all become part of the contest. Supply chains are now battlefields.

None of this replaces traditional intelligence collection, covert capabilities or military power. It dramatically widens the aperture available to policymakers and, perhaps more importantly, allows the private sector to become an active participant in national security.

The Private Sector Is Now Part of the Battlefield

This brings the argument full circle.

When people hear “defense innovation,” they often picture the next drone startup. That is part of the equation, but it is a relatively narrow way to think about the role of private industry in national security.

Private capital can finance autonomy, AI, shipbuilding, advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, energy resilience, cybersecurity, space infrastructure, semiconductors, supply-chain technologies, logistics and commercial intelligence. Nearly all of these increasingly sit somewhere inside the national security stack.

Ukraine should have removed any lingering doubt about that. Commercial technology firms, startups, satellite companies, software developers, drone manufacturers, communications providers and private investors have all become part of the larger ecosystem supporting national resilience and military effectiveness. A modern war may still be fought by soldiers, sailors and airmen, but increasingly they are fighting with technologies developed and financed far outside the traditional defense establishment.

During our podcast discussion, I argued that private capital and private industry will play a central role in Cold War 2.0, but not simply because venture capital can fund another weapon. The larger requirement is bringing the entire private-sector ecosystem into the competition: technology, manufacturing, materials, logistics, infrastructure and capital.

That represents a significant departure from the industrial model that dominated much of the twentieth century. National power is increasingly shaped not simply by what governments own, but by the health of the innovation ecosystems around them.

This is ultimately what we believed when we started IronGate. The venture community’s role is not to replace government or the military. It is to help ensure that America’s best technology, entrepreneurs and capital remain strategic advantages rather than disconnected commercial assets.

The countries that figure out how to connect those pieces most effectively will have an enormous advantage in the competition ahead.

We Also Have to Win the Cognitive War

Technology alone will not solve the problem, because some of the most consequential technology in this conflict is not being used to destroy physical targets. It is being used to shape what people see, believe, fear and ultimately demand from their governments. One of the themes I have repeatedly returned to in writing about Iran is cognitive warfare, and the collision of AI, social media and information operations is making that battlefield larger, faster and far cheaper to exploit.

Iran, Russia and China have spent decades studying Western societies, including our media, elections, political divisions, economic sensitivities and increasingly the algorithms shaping what millions of people see every day. During our podcast discussion, we talked about Iran’s information operations not as something ancillary to its military strategy, but as part of the strategy itself. Tehran understands that an image of a burning tanker, a spike in gasoline prices, a viral claim of American military failure or another narrative about an endless Middle East war can create political effects thousands of miles from the battlefield.

AI has supercharged that capability. The Iranian-linked LEGO-style videos that went viral during the conflict are a good example. Generative AI allowed creators to produce polished, English-language content specifically designed for TikTok, Instagram, X and other platforms, while state-linked media helped amplify it. Canadian government analysis found that engagement increased sharply after the campaign shifted toward English-language generative-AI LEGO content aimed at Western audiences.

What makes the LEGO example important is that audiences do not necessarily experience the content as propaganda. It arrives as a meme, a joke or an entertaining animation that people willingly share. The political message rides inside content engineered for social distribution. AI dramatically lowers the cost and time required to produce sophisticated propaganda, while social-media algorithms can distribute it globally at almost no marginal cost.

This is where information warfare becomes cognitive warfare. The goal is not simply to persuade someone that Iran won a particular engagement. It is to shape the emotional environment around the conflict: America is reckless, the war is unwinnable, Western military power is failing, another endless war is coming, or the economic cost simply is not worth it. Those narratives can also be tailored simultaneously to very different audiences, from antiwar progressives and isolationist conservatives to younger audiences consuming politics primarily through memes and short-form video.

This changes the economics of warfare as well. An inexpensive drone does not need to sink an aircraft carrier to generate a strategic return, and an AI-generated video does not need to persuade an entire country. If the drone forces naval forces to reposition, raises insurance rates and consumes expensive interceptors while an information campaign magnifies those effects online, the physical and cognitive attacks reinforce one another. The drone creates the image; AI packages the narrative; social media distributes it; cognitive warfare seeks to convert it into political and economic pressure.

Ukraine provides the mirror image of the same technological revolution. A smaller country has used commercial technology, social media, open-source intelligence and digital storytelling to mobilize international support and raise the political cost of Russian aggression. Iran demonstrates that many of those same tools can be turned against the West. The technology itself is agnostic; the advantage belongs to whoever combines physical action, information, AI and distribution most effectively.

That is why simply counting destroyed targets tells us little about whether we are actually winning. In modern irregular warfare, the physical and information battlefields increasingly operate as one system. We can win the missile exchange and still lose the narrative. We can destroy the drone and still allow the image of the drone to achieve its intended cognitive effect. Winning Cold War 2.0 therefore requires more than superior weapons. It requires recognizing AI, social media and information warfare as instruments of national power.

Escalation Without Strategy Is Just Expensive Violence

I have repeatedly used the phrase escalate to deescalate to describe the dynamics we have watched unfold around Iran. One useful challenge raised during our recent discussion was whether the phrase might be better understood as escalate to coerce.

I think that is fair.

The larger point remains the same: escalation is a tool, not a strategy. Military force makes sense when it changes an adversary’s calculus toward a clearly defined political objective. Problems begin when we measure success by the number of targets destroyed rather than whether those strikes moved us meaningfully closer to the outcome we actually wanted.

As one of my colleagues put it during the podcast, after every round of escalation we need to ask a very basic question: to what end?

That question becomes even more important as warfare gets cheaper. Lower-cost weapons may paradoxically make escalation easier because more actors will possess precision strike, autonomous systems, cyber tools and the ability to threaten critical infrastructure or commercial shipping.

The technological barrier to entering the battlefield is falling. The strategic discipline required to manage that battlefield therefore needs to increase.

From Peace Through Strength to Strength Through Innovation

Ronald Reagan famously framed deterrence around Peace Through Strength. That principle remains valid, but the definition of strength itself is changing.

In the twentieth century, strength was measured largely by divisions, aircraft, ships, nuclear weapons and industrial capacity. Those still matter enormously. But twenty-first-century military strength increasingly depends on how quickly a country can innovate, how cheaply it can manufacture capability, how resilient its supply chains are, how quickly software can be improved and how effectively private companies can work alongside government.

Ukraine has provided perhaps the clearest modern example of why this matters. Faced with a conventionally larger and better-resourced adversary, Ukraine has repeatedly been forced to innovate simply to survive. Its experience is a reminder that a modern-day David can use technology to challenge Goliath—but also that innovation born from desperation is not a strategy the United States should want to replicate. We have the capital, technology and industrial capacity to prepare before the crisis.

It also depends on whether the country can marshal its capital markets behind strategically important technologies. How quickly can money move toward critical minerals, autonomy, manufacturing, AI, cyber, space and maritime systems? How effectively can startups transition from demonstrations into scaled production? Can we generate affordable autonomous mass rather than relying solely on exquisite scarcity?

Those questions are increasingly measures of national power.

The United States still possesses extraordinary advantages: our universities, entrepreneurs, capital markets, technology companies, defense industrial base, research institutions, alliances and military capabilities. The rise of the American defense-technology venture community over the past decade has added another strategic asset to that list.

But possessing those assets is not the same as integrating them.

That integration is the real challenge of Cold War 2.0.

We will not win simply by spending more money than our adversaries. We will win by making our capital, technology, manufacturing base, military and private sector work together faster and more effectively than theirs.

The answer is not abandoning billion-dollar platforms. It is making sure a billion-dollar platform operates alongside hundreds or thousands of cheaper systems that extend its reach, protect it, provide intelligence, absorb risk and impose costs on the enemy.

It is not choosing between the Navy and autonomous maritime systems. It is building a Navy where autonomous maritime systems become a central component of the fleet.

It is not choosing between intelligence agencies and OSINT. It is recognizing that commercial intelligence can dramatically expand what governments can see and act upon.

And it is not choosing between government and private capital. It is recognizing that private capital itself has become part of the national security ecosystem.

Ukraine has shown how an underpowered David can use innovation, autonomy and commercial technology to resist a much larger Goliath. Iran is demonstrating that the same technological revolution can work in the opposite direction, allowing an asymmetric adversary to impose disproportionate costs on the United States and its allies. Taiwan could someday test these concepts at a scale none of us wants to experience.

IronGate’s thesis nearly a decade ago was that the geopolitical environment was moving in this direction and that private capital and emerging technology would become increasingly central to national security. I think that thesis has aged well. But being early only matters if we take advantage of the head start.

The future of warfare will not simply belong to the country with the most expensive weapons. It will increasingly belong to the country that can innovate faster, manufacture cheaper, distribute capability more widely, understand its adversary more clearly and sustain the fight economically longer.

That is the new economics of warfare.

For the United States, Peace Through Strength increasingly requires one additional ingredient:

Strength Through Innovation.

The Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI) is an independent nonprofit that brings together national security practitioners, scholars, and private-sector experts to advance the study and practice of irregular warfare, working closely with Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point. Its Economic & Legal Warfare (ELW) Project focuses on the expanding gray zone between peace and conventional war—how sanctions, trade and investment controls, supply chains, critical minerals, lawfare, influence operations, capital, and other economic tools can be used to pressure adversaries, shape behavior, and achieve strategic objectives without relying primarily on kinetic force.

(CLICK HERE FOR FULL PODCAST)

The biggest takeaway from our latest Irregular Warfare Initiative discussion is that the Iran conflict can no longer be viewed as a stand-alone military fight. Iran, Russia, China, Ukraine, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea are increasingly interconnected pieces of what I have called Cold War 2.0. This is not simply a contest of missiles, aircraft and ships, but a broader battle of systems involving economics, technology, information warfare, proxies, supply chains and strategic geography.

A recurring theme in the discussion was that we still tend to view conflict through a predominantly kinetic lens while our adversaries operate much more broadly. Iran understands how to use asymmetric warfare, strategic chokepoints and cognitive warfare to impose costs far beyond the battlefield. It also understands our political and economic pressure points, from energy prices to public opinion, and uses information operations alongside military activity to shape Western decision-making.

The other major takeaway is the rapidly changing economics of warfare. Ukraine and Iran are demonstrating from opposite sides of the battlefield how relatively inexpensive drones, autonomous systems and commercially derived technologies can impose enormous costs on much larger and more sophisticated militaries. The West cannot sustainably spend millions of dollars defeating systems that cost a fraction of that amount, and our defense industrial base cannot take years to replenish capabilities while battlefield technology evolves in months.

Ultimately, this is why private capital, commercial technology and autonomy need to become much larger parts of our national security strategy. That extends well beyond small aerial drones into maritime autonomy, AI, advanced manufacturing, critical materials, logistics and commercial intelligence. The countries that succeed in this next era will not simply be those with the biggest military budgets, but those that can innovate faster, field capability cheaper and integrate government, industry and private capital more effectively than their adversaries.

Special thanks to Special thanks to Lt General, USAF (Ret) Richard Newton for joining us.

Look for a more expanded write-up on this topic in a separate Substack Post from me.

An open source assessment current through July 25, 2026 (full citations at the end)

Bias Alert: As an Iranian-born immigrant to the U.S. after the Islamic Revolution, I have long detested the current hardline regime and viewed it as a significant threat to both the West and the Iranian people. I have consistently believed that U.S./Western Iran policy has been flawed and misguided for decades, spanning multiple administrations from across the political spectrum. Addressing the Iranian nuclear issue requires not only identifying and addressing the structure of the program but also confronting the individuals who remain in charge of the country and represent the hardline regime. This faction, while small, is unfortunately deeply entrenched within Iranian economic, political, military, and clerical elite. It should be viewed as a deeply impeded cancer that will be challenging to eradicate.

BLUF

• Iran has mastered much of the science and engineering required to operate an indigenous uranium enrichment program. Bombing can destroy machinery and buy time, but it cannot erase that knowledge.

• The warning was never Iran’s ability to make ordinary reactor fuel. It was the regime’s choice to enrich uranium to 60 percent, reduce monitoring, preserve weapons relevant research, and move sensitive capabilities underground.

• Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer appear to have rendered Natanz and Fordow inoperable and badly damaged Isfahan’s conversion infrastructure. Operation Epic Fury then struck surviving research, weaponization, uranium supply, and reconstruction assets. Operation Economic Fury has targeted the money and procurement networks needed to rebuild.

• The biggest unresolved questions are the location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, the condition of underground storage at Isfahan, surviving personnel and equipment, and the status of Pickaxe Mountain.

• The larger threat is political. A regime that already uses missiles, proxies, maritime disruption, and economic warfare to hold global commerce at risk would become more dangerous under a nuclear shield.

  ---

Executive summary

Iran’s nuclear challenge is larger than Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. The hardliner Iranian regime has built a national ecosystem of mines, conversion plants, enrichment facilities, centrifuge manufacturing, military laboratories, university talent, front companies, procurement networks, and missiles.

The key dividing line is enrichment. Commercial reactors generally use uranium enriched below 5 percent. Iran later moved to 20 percent and then 60 percent. By May 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that it held 408.6 kilograms of 60 percent material. That was not a bomb, and public U.S. intelligence had not confirmed a final decision to build one, but the stockpile sharply shortened the remaining path to weapons grade uranium. (Congress.gov)

Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer caused enormous physical damage and appear to have stopped declared enrichment. Operation Epic Fury then hit parts of the broader weapons support and reconstruction network, while Operation Economic Fury targeted the financial and procurement systems needed to rebuild. Yet the enriched uranium account remains incomplete, underground storage at Isfahan is uncertain, and Pickaxe Mountain remains uninspected. [3][4][5][6][7] (ISIS)

The policy problem is therefore larger than destroying the next tunnel. Tehran has already used missiles, proxies, maritime disruption, and threats to infrastructure to impose global costs. Nuclear weapons would not replace that strategy. They would protect and amplify it.

Enrichment tells us more than the regime’s rhetoric

The Iran people are entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to peaceful nuclear technology under international safeguards. Meanwhile the Iranian regime has also demonstrated that it can produce low enriched uranium suitable for civilian purposes. The issue is not whether Iranian scientists are competent or whether Iran can operate medical, research, or power programs. It can.

The issue is what the hardline regime chose to do once it mastered the basics.

Natural uranium contains only a small percentage of uranium 235. Centrifuges increase that concentration. Ordinary reactor fuel is generally enriched below 5 percent. Research reactor fuel can approach 20 percent. Weapons grade uranium is generally associated with enrichment near 90 percent. The process is not linear. Once uranium reaches 60 percent, most of the difficult enrichment work has already been completed. (Congress.gov)

Iran resumed 20 percent enrichment at Fordow in 2021, began 60 percent production at Natanz later that year, and expanded 60 percent production to Fordow in 2022. Inspectors later found particles enriched to 83.7 percent at Fordow. The IAEA accepted that Iran’s explanation was not inconsistent with an unintended fluctuation, but inspectors also found that centrifuges had been configured differently than Iran declared. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Sixty percent enrichment was not needed for Bushehr or for conventional civilian electricity generation. It created a threshold capability and reduced breakout time. At the same time, Iran restricted monitoring, failed to resolve questions about undeclared nuclear material, expanded advanced centrifuge work, and hardened sensitive facilities underground. (Congress.gov)

A careful assessment must still separate capability from an assembled weapon. The Congressional Research Service noted that public U.S. intelligence continued to assess that Iran halted its structured weapons program in 2003 and had not confirmed a final decision to build a bomb. Iran also faced remaining work involving weapon design, detonation systems, uranium metallurgy, and integration into a delivery system. (Congress.gov)

But a state does not need a completed bomb to gain leverage from standing close to one. Iran built a threshold posture: enough material, expertise, protected infrastructure, and weapons relevant research to make a final political decision increasingly dangerous.

The program is an ecosystem, not three facilities

Bushehr matters because not every Iranian nuclear site should be treated as part of a weapons program. The greatest concern has centered on domestic enrichment, undeclared material, uranium metal work, restricted inspections, military research, and the relationship between SPND and the earlier Amad Plan. NTI, UANI, Arms Control Association, and IAEA reporting describe a program spread across more than a dozen facilities and multiple state institutions. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Four locations became central to the IAEA safeguards investigation: Lavisan Shian, Varamin, Marivan, and Turquzabad. The agency concluded that undeclared nuclear material or activities had occurred and that Iran had not provided technically credible explanations for all outstanding questions. In June 2025, the IAEA Board found Iran in breach of its safeguards obligations for the first time in two decades. (Congress.gov)

At the center of the weapons concern is the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known as SPND. The U.S. Treasury describes SPND as connected to Iran’s previous nuclear weapons effort and sanctioned 14 individuals and 17 entities linked to it in 2019. UANI describes it as the successor to important parts of the Amad Plan and cites U.S. reporting that it employed as many as 1,500 people engaged in dual use research with possible nuclear weapons applications. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

UANI is an advocacy organization with a clear policy position. Its extensive entity mapping is valuable, but its claims are strongest when checked against IAEA reporting, Treasury records, congressional analysis, and independent satellite imagery.

Universities and companies that supported the network

Iran dispersed sensitive expertise through universities, military research institutes, contractors, and firms that appeared commercial but worked for the nuclear or defense establishment. Naming an institution does not implicate its entire faculty or student body. The reported links usually involve particular laboratories, administrators, scientists, or contracts.

Malek Ashtar University of Technology has some of the clearest reported ties to the Amad Plan and later defense research, including links to the nearby Mojdeh or Lavisan 2 SPND campus. A research building associated with the university was destroyed during the 2026 conflict. Imam Hussein University, an IRGC institution, has conducted work in physics, missiles, explosives, and military technology; a physics center and underground research complex were struck during Epic Fury. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Shahid Beheshti University was associated with several nuclear scientists. Islamic Azad University was led by Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, killed during Rising Lion. The University of Tehran hosts the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, which has legitimate research functions but also supported centrifuge component work. Sharif and Amirkabiruniversities have appeared in reporting concerning laboratories or individual researchers tied to nuclear and defense programs. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Key industrial entities include TESA or TABA Karaj, which manufactured centrifuge components; Kalaye Electric, a centrifuge research and testing site; Farayand Technique and Pars Trash, linked to centrifuge work; and Paradise Medical Pioneers and Kimia Part Sivan, described by Treasury as SPND cover or support companies. DamavandTecwas later sanctioned after reporting linked it to efforts to obtain sensitive dual use technology in Russia. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

This dispersed structure can train replacements, create new fronts, move equipment, and conceal sensitive work inside institutions with legitimate civilian functions.

What the military and economic campaigns degraded

Operation Rising Lion began on June 13, 2025. Israel attacked nuclear infrastructure, air defenses, missile forces, senior commanders, and scientists. Operation Midnight Hammer followed on June 22, when the United States struck Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.(ISIS)

At Natanz, attacks destroyed the aboveground pilot enrichment plant, power infrastructure, support systems, and parts of the underground complex. Loss of power and cooling also threatened thousands of spinning centrifuges. Later U.S. strikes targeted the underground halls. Imagery indicates that enrichment stopped and had not resumed by mid 2026.(ISIS)

At Fordow, U.S. penetrator weapons targeted the deeply buried enrichment halls. The Pentagon called the strike a historic success. Independent analysts were more cautious but still assessed that the plant was likely inoperable, with no clear return to underground access or operation.(U.S. Department of War)

At Isfahan, strikes damaged uranium conversion, fuel related plants, uranium metal capability, laboratories, and entrances to underground storage. This was a major blow because conversion produces the uranium hexafluoride gas used in centrifuges, while uranium metal capability is relevant to a potential weapon core. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Other targets included the Arak reactor and heavy water complex, TESA Karaj, a centrifuge component building at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, Kalaye Electric, Mojdeh or Lavisan 2, Sanjarian, and the Shahid Meysami Research Center. The campaign attacked the chain from centrifuge production and enrichment to explosives research, diagnostics, and leadership. (ISIS)

The strongest open source conclusion is that Iran’s declared enrichment capability was severely degraded. The weakest part is the material account. Iran possessed more than 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium. Some may remain at damaged sites, some may be in Isfahan’s tunnels, and some may have been moved. The IAEA lacks the access required for a complete inventory. (Congress.gov)

Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026 as a broader campaign against Iran’s security and military apparatus. Independent imagery analysis identified at least six nuclear sites attacked and three more that may have been nuclear related. Reported targets included Min Zadayi, Taleghan 2, facilities associated with Malek Ashtar and Imam Hussein universities, the Shahid Chamran Group complex, the Ardakan yellowcake plant, and additional infrastructure at Arak, Natanz, Mojdeh, and Shahid Meysami. (ISIS)

Public reporting also indicates that Hossein Jabal Amelian, the serving head of SPND, and Reza Mozaffari Nia, a former head, were killed. Ali Shamkhani, linked in public analysis to oversight during the Amad era, was also killed. (ISIS)

Economic Fury attacks the reconstruction side. Treasury actions targeted shadow banks, currency exchanges, oil sales, tankers, shipping firms, digital asset exchanges, procurement agents, and suppliers of dual use components. Treasury also sanctioned Iran’s so called Persian Gulf Strait Authority as an IRGC effort to extort shipping in Hormuz. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Sanctions do not destroy centrifuges. They make replacement slower, costlier, and more visible, particularly when paired with export enforcement, intelligence, and interdiction.

Operation Narnia and the people behind the program

Operation Narnia was the reported Israeli effort to kill scientists and managers who held the program’s most sensitive practical knowledge. A Washington Post and PBS Frontline investigation said Israeli analysts began with roughly 100 scientists and narrowed the list to about a dozen. It also documented significant civilian casualties around several strikes, a necessary caution against accepting every claim of surgical precision. (The Washington Post)

The IDF said nine senior scientists were killed in the opening attack: Fereydoun Abbasi, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, Akbar Motalebi Zadeh, Saeed Barji, Amir Hassan Fakhahi, Abdolhamid Minouchehr, Mansour Asgari, Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari Daryani, and Ali Bakhouei Katirimi. Independent analysis later counted 11 scientists killed during the 12 Day War and linked many to SPND or the Amad network. (IDF)

The target was experience, not textbook physics. Senior scientists know which experiments failed, which suppliers are reliable, how teams are compartmented, and how theory becomes a manufacturable system.

The best known figure remains Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, often called the “Oppenheimer of Iran.” He led the Amad Plan and later SPND, preserving personnel and research after the structured weapons effort was reorganized. He was assassinated in 2020. His real importance was institutional: he helped build a system designed to survive sanctions, sabotage, and leadership losses. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

The personnel losses may delay specialized work for years, but Iran still has thousands of trained engineers and scientists. They degrade and disorganize the network. They do not guarantee that a successor will not emerge.

Pickaxe Mountain is the unanswered question

Pickaxe Mountain, known as Kuh e Kolang Gaz La, is an underground complex directly south of Natanz. Construction accelerated after sabotage damaged Iran’s aboveground centrifuge assembly plant in 2020. Satellite imagery has shown multiple tunnel portals, large excavation spoil, hardened entrances, security walls, and continuing work. (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Its original reported purpose was to replace exposed centrifuge assembly capability with a protected underground plant. That alone makes it strategically important. Centrifuges are the machinery Iran would need to restore enrichment at Natanz, Fordow, or a new clandestine site.

What is inside is not publicly known. Israeli reporting has suggested that centrifuges were moved into the mountain. President Trump has said the United States is watching the site and has threatened to strike it. Recent reporting by TIME, Deutsche Welle, and other outlets has pushed Pickaxe back to the center of the nuclear debate. Those claims have not been independently verified, and the IAEA has not inspected the complex. (ISIS)

The Institute for Science and International Security offered a more cautious assessment on July 14, 2026. Based on imagery, it judged that the complex remained under construction and was not clearly operational. It also said the site had not been directly attacked during the 2025 or 2026 campaigns. (ISIS)

The correct conclusion is measured: Pickaxe is not publicly proven to be an operating enrichment or weapons plant, but it is a major reconstitution risk. It may preserve centrifuge manufacturing, store surviving equipment, or eventually support undeclared enrichment. Any agreement that covers Natanz and Fordow while leaving Pickaxe off limits would not solve the problem.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia show another path

The United Arab Emirates offers the clearest regional contrast. Barakah has four operating APR 1400 reactors, all in commercial service by September 2024. The IAEA reports a combined capacity of 5,348 megawatts and about 22 percent of UAE electricity production in 2025. (IAEA CNPP)

The UAE built its program through international cooperation, accepted comprehensive safeguards and an Additional Protocol, and committed in its U.S. nuclear agreement not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel domestically. It gained electricity, technical training, and global investment without accumulating 60 percent enriched uranium or building an undeclared enrichment network. (IAEA CNPP)

The new U.S. and Saudi engagement could become a second model, but it requires scrutiny. On July 22, 2026, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement and a bilateral safeguards agreement. The Department of Energy described a decades long, multibillion dollar partnership focused on safety, security, nonproliferation, and U.S. industry. Congress will review the arrangement. (The Department of Energy’s Energy.gov)

Al Jazeera and other reporting correctly note that important details remain unclear, particularly concerning possible domestic enrichment and safeguards enforcement. The UAE model is proven. The Saudi model is still being tested. (Al Jazeera)

Still, the strategic message to the Iranian people is powerful. Nuclear science does not require isolation. A country can pursue energy, skilled jobs, investment, and international integration while accepting real limits and intrusive monitoring.

Iran’s people are not being denied scientific progress because they are Iranian. They are paying the price for a hardline regime that converted a potentially peaceful program into an instrument of strategic ambiguity and coercion.

The JCPOA mistook a nuclear transaction for a strategic settlement

The JCPOA temporarily reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, limited centrifuge operations, altered the Arak reactor project, and expanded international monitoring. Those were meaningful technical achievements. Its central weakness, however, was that it treated the nuclear program as a compartmentalized arms control problem rather than one element of a broader revolutionary strategy. The agreement provided substantial sanctions relief without resolving Iran’s missile development, proxy warfare, hostage diplomacy, maritime coercion, domestic repression, or support for armed groups. Its temporary restrictions and weak missile language allowed Tehran to accept short term constraints without abandoning the ideology or regional ambitions that created the crisis. [27][28][30] (FAQ - US Congress) (United Against Nuclear Iran - JCPOA Analysis)

Any future engagement must account for the character of the current leadership. Iran’s hardline system combines strategic patience and a strong instinct for regime survival with a revolutionary culture that celebrates resistance, sacrifice, and martyrdom. This does not mean every Iranian official is irrational or seeks national destruction. It means the regime has repeatedly shown a willingness to impose extraordinary costs on the Iranian people, tolerate military and economic losses, and prolong confrontation when hardliners believe doing so protects the Islamic Republic or advances its regional mission. A conventional agreement built on expectations of gradual normalization is unlikely to produce durable peace unless it addresses undeclared facilities, enriched uranium, weaponization research, Pickaxe Mountain, missiles, proxy forces, procurement networks, and maritime disruption. Sanctions relief should therefore be phased, reversible, and tied to verified behavior rather than promises or arbitrary expiration dates.

The UAE, and potentially Saudi Arabia, demonstrate that peaceful nuclear energy is possible in the Middle East. The UAE operates four safeguarded commercial reactors without domestic enrichment or a parallel military research network. The emerging U.S. and Saudi nuclear partnership could offer another route based on energy production, international investment, skilled employment, and integration, although its safeguards will require close scrutiny. The message to the Iranian people should be clear: Iran is not being denied nuclear science because it is Iranian. Nuclear energy for peace is possible, but threshold nuclear weapons capabilities cannot be accepted in the hands of a regime that uses proxy warfare, ideological confrontation, and threats to global commerce as permanent tools of statecraft. (U.S. Dept of Energy) (IAEA - UAE Program)

Maritime coercion is already a weapon of mass disruption

The fear of a nuclear armed Iran is not limited to the possibility of a nuclear strike. The more immediate question is how Tehran would behave if it believed a nuclear capability protected it from conventional retaliation.

The Strait of Hormuz offers a preview. Iran has threatened shipping and used the vulnerability of a global energy chokepoint to impose costs on countries far from the battlefield. The 2026 conflict and disruption of the Strait sent shocks through oil markets, insurance, shipping, and global growth expectations. Treasury described the Persian Gulf Strait Authority as an attempt to turn maritime intimidation into revenue for the IRGC. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Iran does not need to sink every tanker. It only needs to make transit uncertain enough that insurers raise premiums, shippers delay voyages, energy markets price in scarcity, and political leaders begin calculating the domestic cost of continued confrontation.

This is a weapon of mass disruption. A nuclear shield could make it more dangerous by convincing Tehran that missiles, proxies, cyber operations, hostage diplomacy, and maritime coercion can be expanded with less fear of retaliation. That is why Iran’s neighbors may fear an Iranian bomb more acutely than distant Western governments. They would live under its shadow every day. (Council on Foreign Relations)

Can this regime make peace?

Operation Epic Fury and Operation Economic Fury have not been publicly framed as traditional regime change campaigns. Their stated focus has been degrading the military, missile, nuclear, financial, and security capabilities threatening the United States and its partners. (Central Command)

But a nuclear agreement cannot by itself change a regime’s worldview. If the hardline leadership continues to define survival through proxy warfare, missile intimidation, concealed research, repression, hostage diplomacy, and threats to global commerce, even a technically strong agreement may become another pause rather than a peace.

A credible settlement would require a complete uranium account, restored IAEA access, inspection of Pickaxe and other protected facilities, enforceable enrichment limits, disclosure of weapons relevant research, and rapid consequences for renewed concealment. It would also have to address missiles, proxies, and maritime coercion because the nuclear program is part of a larger strategy.

The strikes have bought time and imposed extraordinary damage. They have not erased the knowledge or answered whether the regime is prepared to live as a normal state.

The UAE shows that nuclear energy and international integration are compatible. The Saudi engagement may offer another path if its safeguards are strong. The harder conclusion is that Iran’s current hardline system may not want that future. So long as its power depends on controlled crisis and regional disruption, the world will keep confronting new tunnels, front companies, and threats to trade.

The next strike may destroy another facility. Durable peace requires changing the strategic calculation that keeps rebuilding it.

Sources and further reading

Recent reporting and visual context:

• United Against Nuclear Iran (leading think tank focused on Iran’s Nuclear Program)

• Nuclear Threat Initiative

• Table of Iranian Nuclear Sites and Related Facilities (Iran Watch.org)

• The Guardian

• Financial Times

Everyone wants peace with Iran except the Iranian hardliners who rule it.

President Trump wants a deal. Israel wants the nuclear threat removed. Europe and our Gulf allies want stability. Most Iranians want a normal country, economic opportunity, and a future in which their children are not permanently held hostage by the ambitions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The current escalation is not just another exchange of missiles and airstrikes. The kinetic conflict sits at the center of a much wider irregular war involving proxies, maritime coercion, sanctions evasion, economic pressure, nuclear brinkmanship, cyber activity, information operations, and cognitive warfare.

Trump and Bibi Netanyahu have answered with increasingly larger carrots and heavier sticks. The new United States backed civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia may be the clearest example yet. It shows the Iranian people and the broader region that peaceful nuclear energy, advanced technology, investment, and partnership are available through cooperation. It also warns Tehran that its neighbors will not stand still while the regime pursues enrichment, missiles, militias, and regional hegemony.

That is the ultimate carrot and stick. Once again, the hardliners have chosen the stick.

Executive Summary

Since returning to office, Trump has made two positions clear. The Islamic Republic will not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and the United States remains willing to make a deal.

The regime has repeatedly been offered a choice between peaceful nuclear energy and a nuclear weapons pathway, between economic reintegration and isolation, between normal statecraft and permanent war through proxies and maritime coercion.

In 2025, Iran refused serious engagement. Israel launched Operation Rising Lion against Iran’s nuclear, missile, and military infrastructure. The United States followed with Operation Midnight Hammer against Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Those strikes were a major escalation of the stick, but they were followed by months of diplomacy and another opportunity to negotiate. (IDF)

The January 2026 protests exposed the widening gap between the Iranian people and the small group ruling them. At the same time, Tehran continued supporting the financial and smuggling architecture that sustained Houthi pressure in the Red Sea and kept using enrichment as strategic leverage. The regime answered domestic unrest with repression and an internet blackout rather than reform. Trump and Netanyahu again demanded engagement. The regime again declined. (Yahoo)

Operation Epic Fury followed, aimed at Iran’s missile capabilities, navy, proxy support, and nuclear threat. After 39 days of conflict, the campaign shifted toward Operation Economic Fury, a sustained effort to weaken the financial networks, oil revenues, shadow banks, procurement channels, and digital asset infrastructure that allow the regime elite to fund war and protect their wealth. (The White House)

Then came the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding - or in my opinion Unreasonableness or Unlikely).

It offered a ceasefire, negotiations, sanctions relief, and a proposed $300 billion investment and reconstruction framework. It was an enormous carrot (300 billion carrots to be exact). It was also, as I warned at the time, a glorified ceasefire that deferred the hardest questions and relied on two sides pretending they had agreed to the same future.

They had not.

The MOU did not hold. Attacks resumed. The Strait of Hormuz again became the center of the conflict. Iran aligned Houthis expanded the pressure by threatening Saudi ports and shipping in the Red Sea, placing another global chokepoint at risk.

So here we are again.

Another round of escalation intended to produce another round of deescalation. Another stick intended to force the regime back toward negotiations. Another attempt by Tehran to use missiles, proxies, oil prices, shipping disruption, and political anxiety as leverage.

The world wants peace.

The Iranian people want peace.

The hardliners keep choosing the conditions for war.

The Ultimate Carrot and Stick

The new United States and Saudi civil nuclear agreement should not be treated as a side story. It belongs near the center of the Iran debate because it brings the entire contest into focus.

Washington is offering Saudi Arabia a pathway toward advanced civilian nuclear energy through partnership, safeguards, investment, technology, and a long term relationship with the American economic and security system. The agreement creates the legal foundation for a decades long, multibillion dollar civil nuclear partnership and gives American companies a major role in the Saudi program. (The Department of Energy’s Energy.gov)

Initial reporting raised legitimate questions about safeguards and possible domestic enrichment. Trump later stated that the agreement would not allow enrichment and tied it to Saudi participation in the Abraham Accords. Congress should still examine the final safeguards carefully, but the strategic message to Tehran is unmistakable. (AP News)

There is a path to advanced nuclear energy that runs through cooperation, inspections, investment, and international partnership.

There is another path that runs through hidden facilities, military pressure, sanctions, sabotage, and bunker busters.

That is the carrot.

It shows the Iranian people what their country could have under a different political direction. Iran is educated, resource rich, and capable of becoming one of the region’s most prosperous nations.

Instead, the regime has spent decades turning national wealth into missiles, militias, underground facilities, prison systems, propaganda networks, and tools of regional coercion.

The Saudi agreement is also the stick.

It tells the hardliners that the region will not wait forever while they decide whether Iran wants cooperation or permanent confrontation. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are moving forward. They are building energy systems, technology platforms, infrastructure, capital markets, and international partnerships. Israel will continue defending itself. Europe will keep demanding nonproliferation. Washington will continue applying military and economic pressure when Tehran refuses diplomacy.

The hardliners want to use nuclear brinkmanship to establish regional dominance. Washington is showing Iran’s neighbors that advanced nuclear capability can come through partnership rather than threats.

Escalation to Deescalation Is Not New

“Escalation to deescalation” has become the recurring pattern.

Trump offers engagement. Tehran delays, refuses, or demands terms that preserve the very capabilities under dispute. Military or economic pressure follows. The regime retaliates directly or through its regional network. Costs rise. Mediators return. A ceasefire or temporary framework is produced. The regime uses the pause to preserve leverage. The disagreement returns.

Then the cycle begins again.

Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer were not launched in a diplomatic vacuum. They followed the regime’s refusal to resolve the nuclear issue on terms that would credibly prevent a weapons pathway. Rising Lion targeted nuclear infrastructure, missile production, command nodes, air defenses, and senior military leadership. Midnight Hammer struck three nuclear facilities with the stated purpose of destroying or severely degrading the nuclear program. (IDF)

Those operations were the stick.

But the door to negotiations remained open. Trump was not demanding the destruction of Iran as a country. He was offering the possibility of sanctions relief, economic recovery, trade, and international acceptance if the regime abandoned the nuclear weapons pathway and changed the behavior that had repeatedly brought it into conflict with its neighbors.

The regime refused the larger bargain.

January, Epic Fury, and the Next Stick

The January protests again demonstrated that the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people are not interchangeable.

Iranians took to the streets because they were angry at repression, corruption, economic failure, and a political system that spends enormous resources projecting power abroad while failing to provide basic opportunity at home. The regime answered by shutting down the internet and using force to crush the unrest.

At the same time, the regional pressure campaign continued.

Iran’s relationship with the Houthis gave the regime leverage in and around the Red Sea and Bab el Mandeb. Hormuz and the Red Sea are connected pressure points, giving Tehran and its partners leverage over two critical commercial and energy corridors.

A nuclear weapon is a weapon of mass destruction.

Hormuz and the Red Sea are weapons of mass disruption.

They raise insurance rates, reroute tankers, increase fuel prices, and turn a regional conflict into a kitchen table problem around the world.

That is irregular warfare in practice.

The battlefield includes the gas pump, the shipping market, the ballot box, and the public’s tolerance for an increasingly expensive conflict.

Operation Epic Fury was another application of the stick. The White House described its objectives as destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, crippling its navy, severing support for proxy forces, and preventing the regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. (The White House)

After 39 days, the military phase gave way to another pressure campaign.

Economic Fury and the War Inside the Regime

Operation Economic Fury was never just another sanctions package.

It targeted the machinery that makes the Islamic Republic’s irregular warfare model possible: oil sales, exchange houses, shadow banks, front companies, shipping networks, procurement channels, digital asset exchanges, weapons suppliers, and the offshore structures used by the IRGC and Defense Ministry. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

It was designed to weaken the regime’s ability to rebuild its military, fund proxies, move revenue, and protect insider wealth. But there was a second objective.

The hardliners are not the only people inside the Iranian power structure.

There are business figures, clerics, officers, oligarchs, political families, and economic insiders who benefit from the system but may not share the true believers’ desire for endless confrontation. Many care more about preserving wealth, access, and family security than they do about exporting the revolution or dying in a final struggle with the West.

The pressure was meant to force a choice inside the regime.

Do those elites continue protecting the hardliners as the country is pushed toward financial ruin, or do they begin applying pressure from within for a different direction?

External power cannot manufacture a clean democratic transition, but it can widen the cracks between ideological hardliners and self interested insiders whose survival depends on avoiding collapse.

The MOU Was a Pause, Not Peace

Then came the memorandum of MISunderstanding.

The framework offered a ceasefire, a negotiating period, sanctions relief, and a proposed investment fund of at least $300 billion for reconstruction and economic development. Reuters reported that the framework contemplated private capital rather than a direct $300 billion payment from the United States. (Investing.com)

It was an extraordinary carrot for a country whose leaders had spent years driving it into isolation.

But the MOU was never a final settlement. It was a pause wrapped in diplomatic language.

The central disagreements remained. Enrichment. Missiles. Proxies. Sanctions. Maritime security. The Strait of Hormuz. The future role of the IRGC. The definition of Iranian sovereignty. The definition of regional order.

I warned that it would not last because the two sides were not agreeing to the same peace.

Washington saw the MOU as a bridge toward normalization.

The hardliners saw it as a way to stop the immediate punishment, preserve leverage, and reopen negotiations without accepting the strategic changes everyone else considered essential.

The ceasefire frayed. Attacks resumed. The Houthis declared a blockade against Saudi Arabia and warned vessels away from Saudi ports, widening the conflict toward the Red Sea just as Hormuz was already under pressure. (Reuters)

The MOU did not fail because peace is impossible.

It failed because the hardliners’ definition of a good deal remains incompatible with almost everyone else’s.

The Kinetic War Is Only the Center Layer

This is where the messaging becomes important.

The kinetic conflict is the most visible part of the war, but it is not the whole war. Around the missiles and airstrikes sits every element of irregular warfare.

There are proxies applying pressure from Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

There is maritime coercion in Hormuz and the Red Sea.

There is economic warfare through oil, insurance, shipping, sanctions, and shadow finance.

There is political warfare aimed at dividing the United States from Europe, Israel from the Gulf, and Western governments from their own publics.

There is cyber activity, censorship, propaganda, and information control.

And there is cognitive warfare aimed at shaping how the entire conflict is understood.

The regime wants the public to judge every American or Israeli strike as a standalone event. It wants the world to forget the failed negotiations, nuclear threats, proxy attacks, maritime pressure, and years of escalation that came before the response.

• Create the crisis.

• Escalate through proxies.

• Blur the timeline.

• Portray retaliation as the original aggression.

Then use Western media, civilian fear, oil prices, and political division to create pressure for concessions.

That is messaging 101. That is Cognitive Warfare

The regime does not have to win militarily if it can convince enough people that resisting it is more costly than accommodating it.

Everyone Wants a Deal, but Not the Same Deal

Trump wants a deal that prevents a nuclear weapon, protects American personnel, keeps international waterways open, and reduces the regime’s ability to wage war through proxies.

Netanyahu wants the existential threat to Israel removed.

Europe wants nonproliferation, open commerce, and an end to the energy, migration, and security shocks created by another regional war.

The Gulf states want stability, investment, protected infrastructure, and the ability to continue building the next generation of their economies.

Most Iranians want a normal country.

They want jobs, travel, technology, functioning infrastructure, and a government that invests Iran’s wealth in Iran.

The hardliners want something else.

They want recognition of the Islamic Republic as the dominant revolutionary power in the region. They want enrichment preserved as permanent leverage. They want missiles and militias that can threaten Israel, pressure the Gulf, and impose costs on the United States. They want sanctions relief without dismantling the architecture that caused the sanctions.

That is not a compromise.

It is an attempt to get the international community to finance the next round of coercion.

The disagreement is not simply about centrifuge counts or inspection language. It is about the future order of the Middle East.

The United States, Israel, Europe, the Gulf, and most Iranians can imagine a prosperous Iran living inside a peaceful regional system.

The hardliners imagine a system with the Islamic Republic sitting above it.

Those futures do not align.

The Martyrdom Mindset

This brings us back to the argument I made in “The Martyrdom Doctrine: How Iran’s IRGC Turns Ideology into Strategy.”

Western policymakers often assume that all governments eventually process pressure through the same basic calculation. Leaders want to preserve the state, protect their wealth, avoid destruction, and compromise when the cost becomes too high.

Those assumptions matter, but they are not enough to explain the hardest elements of the Islamic Republic.

The true believers inside the IRGC operate within an ideological culture that treats sacrifice, endurance, resistance, and martyrdom as more than costs. They can be presented as evidence of faith, revolutionary legitimacy, and participation in a larger historical struggle. Absorbing punishment is not always interpreted as failure. It can be reframed as proof that the regime remains committed to its mission. (Hamlet’s Substack)

The Middle East Institute’s study of Mahdism inside the IRGC describes an organization in which ideological indoctrination has received increasing emphasis and in which some hardline circles understand hostility toward the United States, the destruction of Israel, missiles, and regional militias through an apocalyptic religious framework. The authors also warn that promotion systems favoring ideological conviction could elevate increasingly radical officers. (Middle East Institute)

This needs to be said carefully.

This is not the Iranian people.

It is not Persian culture.

It is not Shi’a Islam.

It is not even every official or officer inside the Islamic Republic.

It is a narrow but powerful group of hardliners who control the institutions that matter most.

But that narrow group can still determine whether the country accepts peace or chooses another war.

We should keep trying to reach a deal. A peaceful and prosperous Iran would benefit the Iranian people, the region, and the world.

But it is difficult to negotiate with leaders whose worldview sometimes appears rooted in a death wish.

How do you deter someone who believes suffering validates him?

How do you offer prosperity to leaders whose legitimacy depends on resistance?

How do you reach a durable compromise with people who treat compromise as betrayal?

That is the question hanging over every ceasefire and every new negotiating round.

Back to the Stick

So here we are again.

The MOU failed. The carrot was enormous. The regime refused the real bargain behind it. Attacks resumed. Hormuz again became the center of the war. The Houthis expanded the pressure toward Saudi shipping and the Red Sea. American strikes intensified while mediators once again looked for a temporary ceasefire that could reopen negotiations.

Another escalation intended to produce another deescalation.

Another stick intended to force the hardliners back to the table.

Maybe the next round works. We should hope it does.

But peace requires more than a pause in the shooting. It requires verified nuclear limits, open waterways, serious constraints on proxy warfare, and economic incentives that benefit the Iranian people rather than simply refill the accounts of the same elites who created the crisis.

It also requires someone in Tehran who is capable of saying yes.

The world wants peace.

Trump wants a deal.

Israel wants the nuclear threat removed.

Europe and the Gulf want stability.

Most Iranian people want a bright future and a normal relationship with the world.

The hardliners remain the obstacle.

This is not a war against the Iranian people. It is a struggle over whether a small group of ideological extremists will continue holding an ancient nation and an entire region hostage to their ambitions.

We should keep offering the carrot because peace is worth pursuing.

But until the leadership in Tehran is prepared to live inside a peaceful regional order, we should not be surprised when the carrot is rejected, the stick returns, and the cycle begins again.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The Iran/U.S. conflict did not pause because an MOU was signed. It evolved.

The kinetic phase may have slowed, but the broader irregular warfare campaign is accelerating. Iran is now using economic warfare, maritime coercion, proxy pressure, cognitive warfare, and global market disruption as part of the same operating system.

For years, the world focused on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction as the central threat. That threat remains real. But the regime may now understand that threatening the Strait of Hormuz and global trade gives it something more immediately usable: a weapon of mass disruption.

A nuclear weapon is catastrophic, but it is also a one-time bullet. Once used, the world changes forever. Hormuz is different. Hormuz is scalable, reusable, deniable, adjustable, and politically corrosive. It can be turned up, turned down, paused, restarted, and used repeatedly to pressure oil markets, shipping lanes, insurance markets, inflation, supply chains, Gulf stability, Western voters, and global political will.

That is why Araqchi’s latest threat matters. His warning that outside intervention in the Strait of Hormuz could delay reopening, raise tensions, and derail the MOU is not just diplomatic posturing. It is Iran openly framing Hormuz as leverage.

Investors, executives, allocators, and voters all want a clean solution. A truce. A signed paper. A return to normal. A neat diplomatic box that says the crisis is over.

The facts are making that much harder.

The recent tit for tat attacks between Iran and the United States are not just isolated violations of a ceasefire. They are a warning that the MOU was likely dead on arrival because the underlying conflict was never resolved. It simply moved from one battlefield to another.

Executive Summary

The Iran conflict has entered a new phase. The initial kinetic campaign degraded parts of Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure, but the fight is now shifting into economic warfare, cognitive warfare, maritime coercion, sanctions pressure, proxy escalation, and global market disruption.

The MOU should not be viewed as a peace deal. It is better understood as a temporary and contested pause, closer to a 60-day inspection period on a very broken house than a durable agreement. Every major party entered the framework with different assumptions, different incentives, and different definitions of success.

Iran’s hardliners are not negotiating from a Western framework where “yes” means done. For Tehran, “yes” often means the next round of leverage begins. That is especially true when the regime believes time, ambiguity, proxy pressure, and market volatility work in its favor.

The most important strategic development is Iran’s apparent realization that it does not need a nuclear weapon to hold the world hostage. Threatening Hormuz, activating the Houthis in the Red Sea, keeping Hezbollah alive in Lebanon, pressuring Iraq, and manipulating global energy and shipping risk may give Tehran a more flexible coercive toolkit than the nuclear threat alone.

Araqchi’s latest remarks make this explicit. By claiming that Hormuz remains under Iran’s total oversight and management, warning against outside intervention, and tying the MOU’s survival to Lebanon and Israeli conduct, Iran is treating the Strait not as a neutral global waterway, but as a bargaining chip.

The West should stop separating Iran’s nuclear program from its missiles, proxies, shadow banking, sanctions evasion, maritime coercion, and cognitive warfare. That was one of the core failures of prior Iran policy. A workable deal cannot address enrichment while leaving Hormuz, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the IRGC, and sanctions evasion - and the regime that runs all this - untouched.

The bottom line is simple: Iran is trying to make the cost of confronting the regime feel higher than the cost of tolerating it. The West needs to reverse that equation.

The MOU Did Not End the Conflict. It Changed the Shape of It.

The biggest mistake we can make right now is assuming the Iran/U.S. conflict paused because an MOU was signed.

It did not.

What paused, temporarily, was the most visible part of the conflict. The strikes. The missile exchanges. The overt kinetic activity. The part that makes cable news easy to package and politicians easy to spin. But the actual conflict has not stopped.

It has evolved.

We are now watching the Iran conflict shift from a primarily kinetic phase into something far more complex: economic warfare, maritime coercion, sanctions maneuvering, proxy activation, insurance market disruption, cognitive warfare, and political warfare all moving at the same time.

This is not peace.

This is irregular warfare with a diplomatic wrapper.

The MOU was better understood as an agreement to maybe have an agreement. A formalized ceasefire. A temporary pause. A 60-day inspection period on a very broken house where every party disagrees about what needs to be repaired, who owns the deed, and whether the current occupants are even authorized to sell.

The U.S., Israel, Gulf states, Iranian hardliners, and Iranian economic elites are not all trying to buy the same house.

The U.S. wants a nuclear program that is meaningfully constrained.

Israel wants a nuclear and missile threat that is not simply paused, but dismantled or degraded enough to be strategically tolerable.

• The Gulf wants stability, energy flows, and a reduction in Iranian coercion.

• The Iranian economic elite wants sanctions relief without regime collapse.

• The hardliners want regime survival, revolutionary legitimacy, proxy preservation, and enough ambiguity to claim victory.

Those are not aligned interests.

That is why the MOU was likely dead on arrival. Not because every line was meaningless, but because every line was open to competing interpretation. Each party entered the MOU with its own narrative already loaded.

• For Washington, it may have been a path to de-escalation.

• For Tehran, it may have been a path to time, sanctions relief, and leverage.

• For Israel, it may have been a pause to assess whether U.S. diplomacy would produce anything real.

• For the Iranian people, it may have looked like another agreement negotiated over their heads with the same regime that has spent decades brutalizing and bankrupting them.

And for the hardliners, “yes” does not mean the deal is done.

It means the next round of negotiation has begun.

The Clean Solution Everyone Wants Is Not the One the Facts Support

• Investors want stability.

• Executives want predictable supply chains.

• Allocators want to know how to price geopolitical risk.

• Voters want gas prices down, markets calm, and the summer news cycle to move on.

Everyone wants the clean solution. A truce. A signed MOU. A diplomatic handshake. A neat headline that says the war is ending and the world can return to normal.

The problem is that Iran does not operate on clean solutions.

The regime operates on ambiguity. Delay. Pressure. Narrative manipulation. Proxy leverage. Tactical pauses. Sanctions relief. Strategic patience. And when necessary, escalation dressed up as defensive necessity.

A clean diplomatic solution requires shared definitions, shared obligations, shared enforcement mechanisms, and shared incentives.

This MOU appears to have been born with the opposite problem: every party seems to be reading it through its own preferred lens.

• Washington may see it as a path to de-escalation.

• Tehran may see it as a path to time and leverage.

• Israel may see it as a pause before the next decision point.

• The Gulf states may see it as risk management. Iran’s hardliners likely see it as something else entirely: not a settlement, but a platform to continue the fight under more favorable conditions.

That is why this was never really a deal.

It was an agreement to maybe have an agreement (that is likely ‘un-agreeable”!

From Kinetic Conflict to Economic and Cognitive Warfare

The first phase of this conflict was kinetic.

The U.S. and Israel used military force to degrade Iran’s ability to wage war at scale, weaken elements of the hardline leadership, and signal that red lines would no longer be treated as rhetorical decorations. That mattered.

The regime’s military and nuclear infrastructure took real damage. Its deterrence narrative was punctured. Its ability to project strength was challenged in a way Tehran had not experienced in years.

But kinetic force was never going to be the whole answer.

The Iranian regime does not operate like a conventional nation-state pursuing normal national interests. It operates as a revolutionary security state with a mafia economy, an ideological hardline core, a proxy network, a sanctions evasion architecture, and a domestic repression machine.

That means you cannot evaluate this conflict by counting craters or destroyed facilities alone.

The real question is whether the pressure applied to Iran weakens the regime’s ability to fund the IRGC, pay the Basij, sustain Hezbollah and the Houthis, support militias in Iraq, and convince the Iranian people and the outside world that the regime is still inevitable.

That is where the conflict is now moving.

The kinetic fight is giving way to the economic fight. And the economic fight is inseparable from the cognitive fight.

This is where Operation Economic Fury matters. This should not be understood as a normal sanctions campaign or another round of designations that get announced, applauded, and then slowly worked around. The better way to understand it is as a solvency assault.

That means targeting the regime’s ability to function financially. Maritime interdictions. Buyer sanctions. Shadow banking disruptions. Crypto seizures. Oil pressure. Commercial exposure. Insurance risk. Shipping uncertainty.

• The goal is not just to punish the regime symbolically.

• The goal is to constrict the money flows that allow the hardliners to sustain power.

• Totalitarian regimes do not survive on slogans alone. They survive because they can pay people to enforce the slogans.

The IRGC, Quds Force, Basij, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the broader axis of resistance all require money, logistics, banking channels, front companies, shipping networks, fuel, drones, spare parts, communications, and cash.

The ideological true believers may be willing to die for the regime. But many of the economic and political elites around the regime are not there for martyrdom. They are there for money, protection, power, and self-preservation.

That distinction matters.

There is no monolithic Iran. There is not even a monolithic regime.

Inside the regime you have hardline ideological fanatics who believe in the revolutionary project and view confrontation with the West as part of their identity. But you also have economic and political elites who benefit from the regime, enrich themselves through the regime, and want the regime to survive because their own fortunes depend on it.

Those are not the same people. The hardliners may want resistance at any cost. The kleptocrats want to survive and stay rich.

The more pressure applied to their money, assets, networks, and ability to move capital, the more likely the internal fractures widen.

Hormuz Is a Weapon of Mass Disruption

For decades, Iran’s nuclear program has been treated as the central pillar of its coercive strategy.

That threat remains real. A nuclear-armed Iran would be a strategic nightmare. It would alter deterrence. It would embolden proxies. It would give the regime a shield behind which it could expand its malign activity throughout the region and beyond.

But the regime may have stumbled onto something more immediately usable than a nuclear weapon. The Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has spent years pursuing weapons of mass destruction to underwrite its hegemonic ambitions. But what it may now realize is that it already has access to something almost as powerful in day-to-day coercive terms: a weapon of mass disruption.

A nuclear weapon is a one-time bullet. Once used, the world changes forever. The taboo is enormous. The retaliation would be overwhelming. The consequences would be existential. But economic disruption is different.

Iran can threaten Hormuz repeatedly. It can mine waters. Harass tankers. Launch drones. Use small boats. Create ambiguity. Push insurance rates higher. Force rerouting. Activate the Houthis in the Red Sea. Signal escalation without fully owning it. Raise oil prices without firing a nuclear weapon. Inject uncertainty into global markets without crossing the nuclear threshold.

That is the beauty of economic weapons from Tehran’s perspective.

• They are scalable.

• They are reusable.

• They are deniable.

• They are adjustable.

• They can be turned up, turned down, paused, restarted, and reframed as defensive action.

That is what makes Hormuz so dangerous. The nuclear threat gets the headlines. Hormuz moves the markets.

Iran can threaten global oil flows without having to win a naval war. It can threaten shipping without having a blue-water navy. It can spike risk without sinking a fleet. It can create political pressure in Washington, Europe, and Asia by making energy markets nervous.

That is irregular warfare at scale.

A handful of mines, drones, small boats, or proxy attacks can create consequences far beyond their military value. The point is not to defeat the U.S. Navy. The point is to make shipowners hesitate, insurers reprice risk, oil traders panic, supply chain managers scramble, and voters complain about gas prices.

Questions and dynamics shaping the conflict

• In a traditional conflict, we ask who controls the territory.

• In this conflict, we should be asking who controls the cost curve.

• Can Iran make the West pay economically for military pressure?

• Can the U.S. and Israel make the regime pay politically and financially for escalation?

• Can the Gulf states maintain stability while their own shipping lanes are used as bargaining chips?

• Can Europe absorb energy and supply chain volatility without cracking politically?

• Can Asia tolerate risk to energy flows without pushing for accommodation?

That is the battlefield now. Not just Fordow. Not just Natanz. Not just missile sites.

Hormuz. Bab el-Mandeb. The Red Sea. Suez. Insurance markets. Tanker routes. Shadow fleets. Crypto rails. Proxy logistics. Public narratives. Voter patience.

This is what modern irregular warfare looks like.

Araqchi Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

This is why Araqchi’s latest threat matters.

Standing in Baghdad, he framed the Strait of Hormuz as being under Iran’s total oversight and management. He warned that any intervention, unilateral action, or new development would exacerbate the situation, delay the reopening of the waterway, and raise the level of tension and escalation.

That is not throwaway diplomatic language. That is Tehran openly placing Hormuz at the center of its coercive strategy.

Iran is saying, in effect: if you want trade to move, if you want the Strait reopened, if you want the MOU to survive, then respect our claimed control over the process.

That is not peace. That is leverage.

He also tied the MOU to Lebanon, demanding that the United States force Israel to stop strikes and withdraw from occupied areas. Again, this is the Iranian regime doing what it always does: expanding the negotiating field, blending unrelated pressure points, and using ambiguity to turn a limited agreement into a broader regional bargaining platform.

• Hormuz becomes one lever.

• Lebanon becomes another.

• The Gulf becomes another.

• Iraq becomes another.

• The Houthis become another.

• Hezbollah becomes another.

This is not a narrow ceasefire implementation problem. It is an integrated irregular warfare campaign.

The Proxy Chokepoint Strategy

The Houthis matter because they give Iran a second maritime pressure point.

Hormuz is one lever. The Red Sea is another.

If Iran can threaten the Strait of Hormuz while the Houthis pressure shipping through the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb, Tehran can create a multi-chokepoint problem for global trade.

• That does not require Iran to formally declare war.

• It does not require a conventional naval victory.

• It requires enough credible risk that commercial actors begin adjusting behavior.

And in shipping, behavior changes fast. A vessel does not need to be destroyed for the market to respond. It only needs to be at risk.

Insurance can be available and still not solve the problem. You can insure a ship, but insurance does not make a captain eager to sail into a missile or drone envelope. Insurance pays after loss. It does not make a vessel invincible.

The first decision point for shipping is not always, can I get coverage?

It is, can I get through alive?

That is why Iran’s economic disruption strategy is so powerful. It attacks confidence. It attacks predictability. It attacks the assumption that global trade routes are reliable.

Lebanon and Hezbollah matter for the same reason.

Iran does not have regional reach without its proxy architecture. Hezbollah has long been the crown jewel of that network. It is not just another militia. It is the proof of concept for Iran’s model of exporting revolution, embedding military power inside weak states, and using non-state actors as strategic leverage.

But Hezbollah is weaker today than it was before October 7.

Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership, infrastructure, communications, and operational depth has clearly taken a toll. The fact that the Lebanese government is even trying to push back against Iranian influence is not a small development. A year ago, that would not have been on many bingo cards.

That is why Lebanon matters so much to Tehran.

If Iran loses Hezbollah as a credible forward pressure tool, it loses a major part of its deterrent architecture. If Lebanon begins pulling away from Hezbollah’s shadow, Tehran’s regional model starts looking less inevitable.

So Iran has every incentive to tie Lebanon back into the negotiation framework. It wants to present itself as a regional dealmaker, not just a sanctioned regime under pressure. It wants to show Iraq, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other aligned factions that the axis still has juice. It wants to prove that even after being hit hard, Tehran remains the center of gravity.

That is why any agreement that ignores proxies is unserious.

A nuclear deal that leaves Iran’s proxy network untouched is not a peace deal. It is a funding mechanism with a press release.

Economic Warfare and Cognitive Warfare Feed Each Other

The podcast conversations warned that the next phase would be cognitive and economic. That has proven correct.

The Iranian regime understands that it does not need to win the argument on the merits. It needs to create enough confusion that Western audiences begin arguing with each other.

Fog of Economic and Cognitive Warfare

• Did Trump get played?

• Did Israel overreach?

• Did Iran survive and claim victory?

• Was the MOU a breakthrough or a surrender?

• Are sanctions working or hurting civilians?

• Is the regime weak or stronger than ever?

This is the cognitive battlespace.

Iran’s goal is to feed narratives into existing fractures. Anti-Trump audiences. Anti-Israel audiences. Anti-war audiences. Hard right isolationists. Hard left anti-imperialists. Academics who see every conflict through an anti-Western lens. Think tank voices still emotionally invested in JCPOA-style engagement. Media outlets looking for a clean “both sides” frame.

None of this means criticism of U.S. or Israeli policy is illegitimate. It absolutely is legitimate. Democracies require criticism.

But there is a difference between independent criticism and laundering an adversary’s preferred narrative through domestic political channels.

That is where Iran is effective.

The regime takes facts, wraps them in a preferred narrative, and injects them into ecosystems already primed to believe the worst about America, Israel, or the Trump administration. That is how disinformation works. It is rarely pure fiction. It is a selective arrangement of facts designed to produce a desired conclusion.

And right now, the desired conclusion is simple: confronting Iran is too costly.

• The loop is straightforward.

• Iran threatens Hormuz.

• Markets get nervous.

• Gas prices move.

• Shipping slows.

• Insurance reprices risk.

• Politicians panic.

• Media narratives shift.

• Voters get irritated.

• Pundits blame the administration.

• Iran then says, “See, the West cannot sustain pressure.”

That is the essence of coercion.

It is also why the MOU was such a fragile instrument. If the deal framework does not reduce Iran’s ability to weaponize economic disruption, then Tehran walks away with a new playbook.

• Every time sanctions tighten, threaten Hormuz.

• Every time negotiations stall, activate proxies.

• Every time pressure builds, create market volatility.

• Every time the West shows resolve, turn domestic politics against it.

That is not diplomacy. That is extortion by chokepoint.

What This Means for Investors, Executives, Allocators, and Voters

This does not mean panic. It means planning.

The commercial world now has to price a new reality: chokepoints are not just geography. They are geopolitical weapons. Supply chains are not just logistics. They are targets. Insurance is not just risk transfer. It is a signal of confidence or fear.

If Iran can move markets by threatening a waterway, then every boardroom, investment committee, allocator, and voter with exposure to energy, shipping, logistics, infrastructure, defense, and emerging markets needs to take note.

The Iranian People Are Still the Regime’s Biggest Problem

Lost in much of the coverage is the Iranian people.

The regime entered this conflict already weakened internally. Years of protests, economic collapse, corruption, water shortages, currency pressure, repression, and political illegitimacy have left the Islamic Republic with a shrinking base of real support.

Most Iranians are not looking to die for the regime. That matters.

The hardline true believers may still exist. The regime still has the guns. The Basij still has the batons. The prisons still operate. The internet can still be shut down. The security state can still beat people into silence for a period of time.

But silence is not consent.

The Iranian people know exactly who has stolen their future. They know the regime’s slogans do not fill refrigerators. They know the children of regime elites are not living like ordinary Iranians. They know the people preaching resistance often have foreign bank accounts, Western passports, and children abroad.

That is why economic pressure, if properly targeted, matters.

The goal should not be to punish the Iranian people. They have been punished enough by their own rulers.

The goal should be to separate the people from the regime, separate the economic elites from the hardliners, separate the hardliners from their funding, and separate the regime’s propaganda from reality.

That requires precision. It requires patience. It requires information operations. It requires sanctions enforcement. It requires support for dissident information channels. It requires making clear that the enemy is not Iran. The enemy is the regime that has held Iran hostage since 1979.

The West Cannot Separate the Problem Sets Again

The mistake of the JCPOA era was treating Iran’s nuclear program as separable from missiles, proxies, terrorism, sanctions evasion, illicit finance, maritime coercion, and domestic repression.

That mistake cannot be repeated. A workable deal cannot just address enrichment.

• It must address missiles.

• It must address the IRGC.

• It must address proxy funding.

• It must address Hezbollah.

• It must address the Houthis.

• It must address maritime coercion.

• It must address sanctions evasion.

• It must address hostage-taking and assassination plots.

• It must address the regime’s ability to use economic disruption as leverage whenever it wants concessions.

Otherwise, the West will once again trade near-term calm for long-term instability.

And the regime will once again bank the concessions, preserve the infrastructure, wait out the political cycle, and restart the pressure campaign when conditions are favorable.

That is not a theory. That is the playbook.

Conclusion

The latest tit for tat attacks between Iran and the United States may prove to be the moment the MOU’s weakness became obvious.

A real deal creates stability.

This MOU created a pause with unresolved contradictions.

The U.S. and Iran were never aligned on what the MOU meant. Israel was never going to tolerate a paper agreement that left the core threat intact. Iran’s hardliners were never going to accept a deal that truly dismantled their power structure. And the regime was never going to stop using economic and proxy pressure while negotiations continued.

Araqchi’s latest comments only make that clearer.

He is not de-escalating. He is defining the terms of escalation. He is tying Hormuz, Lebanon, U.S. conduct, Israeli conduct, and regional security into one giant pressure campaign.

So now we are back where many of us expected to be.

The kinetic conflict may not immediately return to its prior intensity, but the direction of travel is clear. Economic warfare is escalating. Cognitive warfare is accelerating. Maritime coercion is becoming central. Proxies are being positioned. Each side is testing thresholds.

The Iran conflict has evolved.

It is no longer just a kinetic contest over missiles, drones, and nuclear facilities. It is now a broader irregular warfare campaign where economics, energy, shipping, insurance, proxies, sanctions, narratives, and political fatigue are all part of the same battlefield.

The regime’s nuclear ambitions remain dangerous. But its discovery that global trade itself can be weaponized may be the more immediate strategic threat.

• A nuclear weapon is a weapon of mass destruction.

• Hormuz is a weapon of mass disruption.

• One is catastrophic but difficult to use.

• The other is scalable, reusable, deniable, and politically corrosive.

That is where the West needs to focus.

Because if this MOU collapses, as it increasingly appears likely to do, the next phase of this conflict will not simply be about who has the bigger missile.

It will be about who can endure the economic pain, control the narrative, hold alliances together, and impose costs long enough for the regime’s internal contradictions to break.

The real question is not whether Iran wants a deal.

Of course Iran wants a deal if the deal gives it sanctions relief, preserves regime survival, protects proxy leverage, maintains nuclear ambiguity, and lets the hardliners claim victory.

The real question is whether Iran is willing to accept a deal the U.S., Israel, the Gulf, and the free world can actually live with.

That is a very different question.

And as long as the hardline establishment owns the deed to the house, holds the keys, controls the guns, and benefits from the chaos, the answer is probably no.

The regime may negotiate. It may smile. It may sign an MOU. It may claim moderation. It may speak the language of diplomacy.

But its operating system remains the same: stall, delay, divide, extract concessions, preserve leverage, and survive.

Iran is trying to make the world believe the cost of confronting the regime is too high.

The West needs to make clear that the cost of preserving this regime’s coercive power is higher.

BIAS ALERT: I have long been critical of Western Iran policy (from all sides of the political spectrum), arguing the Iranian regime is the key impediment to a real deal. So long as they are the deal counter-party, I am highly skeptical to anything constructive ahead. I was born in Iran, have done business in the region. During my stint working in the U.S. government, the threats of the Iranian regime were a key area of focus for me. To say I despise the regime would be an understatement. (I do wish more political pundits made their biases clear).

Bottom Line Up Front

The Iran U.S. MOU is not a peace deal. It is a glorified ceasefire dressed up as diplomacy. It pauses the shooting, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, offers Iran a massive economic carrot, and creates a 60 day runway for further negotiations. But it does not resolve the core issues that matter: enrichment, inspections, stockpiles, ballistic missiles, proxies, sanctions sequencing, enforcement, or Iran’s ability to hold global energy markets hostage.

This is not the end of the conflict. It is the next phase of it.

The kinetic fight may be slowing down, but the irregular warfare, economic warfare, and cognitive warfare are accelerating. Iran’s hardliners will use the 60 day window to stall, divide the West, pressure Trump ahead of the midterm cycle, and push narratives that show Iran winning, Trump boxed in, Israel isolated, and the regime surviving. The real question is whether Trump’s carrot and stick diplomacy can create enough pressure inside Iran to split the pragmatic economic and political elite from the hardline faction that still controls the regime.

The cynical truth is simple: a normal Iran could make a deal. A pragmatic Iran could make a deal. But the Islamic Republic, as currently constructed, likely cannot make the deal the U.S., Israel, the Arab world, and the Iranian people actually need.

Executive Summary

• This MOU is not a final peace deal. It is an interim ceasefire framework with a promise to negotiate a future deal.

• The hard issues are deferred. Enrichment, uranium stockpiles, inspections, missiles, proxies, sanctions sequencing, and enforcement remain unresolved.

• The U.S., Israel, and the Arab world need a deal that removes Iran’s strategic leverage. That means nuclear limits, real inspections, missile restrictions, proxy containment, and secure energy flows through Hormuz.

• Iranian regime hardliners want the opposite. They want sanctions relief without surrendering nuclear ambiguity, missiles, proxies, maritime coercion, or revolutionary leverage.

• The Iranian people and parts of the economic and political elite likely want relief and normalization. But the absolutist hardline faction remains the obstacle.

• Trump’s strategy is classic carrot and stick diplomacy. The carrot is sanctions relief, reconstruction, oil revenue, and a possible $300 billion development framework. The stick is the clear threat of renewed and expanded pressure if Iran stalls.

• The 60 day window is politically important. It places the next decision point inside the U.S. midterm campaign cycle, giving Iran an incentive to delay and amplify pressure on Trump not to escalate.

• The conflict is shifting into the gray zone. Iran will increasingly rely on irregular warfare, economic warfare, maritime coercion, proxy pressure, cyber, and cognitive warfare.

• Iran has discovered a repeatable weapon of mass economic disruption. Unlike North Korea’s nuclear threat, which can only be used once, Iran can repeatedly threaten global energy flows through Hormuz and regional instability.

• Any serious future deal must go beyond nuclear. It must address ballistic missiles, proxies, Hormuz, maritime coercion, sanctions evasion, and Iran’s ability to hold global markets hostage.

• The best case may still be imperfect. Internal pressure could push Iran toward a more pragmatic, Moscow style oligarchy or kleptocracy, which would be easier for the West to deal with and better for ordinary Iranians, but still far short of real democracy.

• Until the regime no longer speaks for the Iranian people, the MOU will likely become another pause between rounds of conflict.

The MOU: A Ceasefire With Diplomatic Stationery

There is a familiar problem with negotiating with revolutionary regimes. Everyone else thinks they are trying to solve a crisis. The regime thinks it is trying to survive one.

That is the first thing to understand about the current Iran U.S. MOU. It is not a peace deal. It is not a final nuclear agreement. It is not a regional security compact. It is not even really a durable settlement.

It is a glorified ceasefire with paperwork.

That does not make it meaningless. In fact, it may be very meaningful. It pauses the kinetic phase of the conflict. It reopens the Strait of Hormuz. It creates a 60 day diplomatic runway. It gives markets a reason to breathe. It gives the Trump administration a framework to claim progress. It gives Iran an offramp, some economic oxygen, and a chance to survive the next phase of pressure.

But let’s not pretend this is something it is not.

A true deal resolves the core dispute. This MOU defers it.

A true deal contains hard commitments. This MOU contains promises to negotiate hard commitments later.

A true deal defines enforcement. This MOU relies on ambiguity, political will, and the hope that both sides fear escalation enough to stay inside the lines.

A true deal closes the most dangerous gaps. This one leaves the biggest gaps wide open: enrichment, stockpiles, inspections, sanctions sequencing, missiles, proxies, Lebanon, and Iran’s ability to hold global energy markets hostage.

So yes, this is an agreement. But it is an agreement to continue negotiating. It is a ceasefire extension with incentives attached. It is a container for a future peace deal, not the peace deal itself.

And that distinction matters.

What the MOU Actually Does

At a high level, the MOU does a few important things.

It declares an end to military operations between the U.S. and Iran, and appears to include references to fronts like Lebanon. It creates a 60 day period for the parties to negotiate a final deal. It reopens the Strait of Hormuz and begins unwinding the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. It includes temporary sanctions relief, oil waivers, access to some frozen or restricted Iranian funds, and a proposed reconstruction and development package reportedly approaching $300 billion. It also includes language around Iran not producing or acquiring nuclear weapons, while preserving further nuclear details for later talks.

That all sounds substantive. And parts of it are.

But the key phrase is “later talks.”

The fate of Iran’s nuclear program is still to be negotiated. The future of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is still to be negotiated. The inspection regime is still contested. The sanctions relief timetable is still to be negotiated. Ballistic missiles are not meaningfully resolved. Iran’s proxy architecture is not meaningfully dismantled. Hezbollah and Hamas do not magically disappear because diplomats wrote nice language in Switzerland. And Iran’s ability to threaten the global economy through the Strait of Hormuz remains the elephant in the room.

This is why calling it a “peace deal” is a mistake.

It is not peace. It is a pause.

The Difference Between a Deal and Deal Theater

A real peace deal would require Iran to make decisions the hardline faction of the regime is structurally incapable of making.

The U.S., Israel, and the Arab Gulf states may not agree on everything, but their broad red lines are not hard to understand. They need a deal that prevents Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. They need intrusive and durable inspections. They need limits on enrichment. They need a credible mechanism to deal with existing stockpiles. They need ballistic missiles addressed. They need Iran’s proxy warfare network curtailed. They need the Strait of Hormuz to remain an international waterway, not a toll road controlled by the IRGC. They need Iran to stop using regional instability as a negotiating instrument.

The Iranian hardliners want almost the opposite.

They want sanctions relief without surrendering strategic leverage. They want nuclear ambiguity without full transparency. They want the ability to preserve enrichment as a symbol of sovereignty and regime prestige. They want the missile program off the table. They want Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and other proxies treated as external political issues rather than extensions of Iranian irregular warfare. They want the Strait of Hormuz to remain a pressure point. They want to convert escalation into compensation.

That is the problem.

The West wants Iran to stop behaving like a revolutionary hostage taker.

The regime wants to be paid for temporarily putting the hostage down.

That gap is not narrow. It is the whole deal.

The Iranian People Want Relief. The Regime Wants Survival.

Here is where the analysis has to be honest. The Iranian people are exhausted.

They have lived through 47 years of ideological failure, economic mismanagement, corruption, repression, censorship, capital flight, sanctions, regional adventurism, currency collapse, and a regime that has spent more energy exporting revolution than building a functioning country. Most Iranians do not want permanent war with the West. They do not want to be isolated from the global economy. They do not want their children’s future sacrificed to preserve the mythology of 1979.

Even parts of Iran’s economic and political elite likely understand this.

There is a pragmatic faction inside the system, or at least around the system, that wants sanctions relief, access to capital, normalization, trade, reconstruction, and a path back into the global economy. These are not Jeffersonian democrats. Let’s be clear about that. Many of them are hardline light technocrats, security connected businessmen, former regime insiders, and political elites who want a more functional Iran because a functioning Iran is better for their own wealth, status, and survival.

But that still matters.

Because this MOU may become a fissure point.

The Trump administration is essentially offering a massive carrot while making clear the stick is still on the table. The reported reconstruction and development package is not just economic relief. It is a political wedge. It says to Iran’s pragmatic elite: there is a future where the country gets money, trade, reconstruction, and reintegration. But there is also a future where the hardliners drag all of you into another round of escalation.

That is the internal pressure point.

The hardliners, people in the orbit of figures like Ahmad Vahidi and the deeper IRGC security state, are absolutists. They are ideologically invested in resistance. They are institutionally invested in proxy warfare. They are financially invested in sanctions economies, smuggling networks, and the militarized state. For them, a real deal is not just a diplomatic compromise. It is a threat to the architecture that keeps them powerful.

So the regime is split between those who understand the country needs a deal and those who know a real deal could eventually unravel them.

That is why this MOU may be more important as an internal Iranian political stress test than as a peace agreement.

Trump’s Carrot and Stick Diplomacy

This moment also needs to be understood through the lens of Trump’s carrot and stick diplomacy over the last two years.

Trump has repeatedly signaled that he wants a deal. Not a polite process. Not endless European style diplomatic theater. A deal. He has offered offramps, floated reconstruction concepts, and suggested Iran could have a better economic future if it came to terms.

But when the hardliners rebuked him, the stick followed.

That has been the pattern. Offer the carrot. Get rejected. Apply pressure. Escalate. Then offer the carrot again, but now with the memory of the stick fresh in everyone’s mind.

Ahead of this MOU, there were days of sharp attacks on Iran and promises of more. That pressure mattered. Tehran did not arrive at the table because it suddenly discovered moderation. It arrived because the cost curve changed.

That is the essence of “escalate to de escalate.”

People misunderstand that phrase. It is not escalation for the sake of escalation. It is escalation designed to alter the adversary’s decision calculus. It is the use of controlled force, economic pressure, and psychological pressure to create a negotiation point that previously did not exist.

This MOU is the ultimate version of that logic.

The carrot is enormous: sanctions relief, access to oil revenue, frozen funds, a possible $300 billion reconstruction and development framework, and a path back into the global economy.

The stick is also obvious: if Iran uses the 60 day window to stall, deceive, rebuild, or continue pressure through proxies and Hormuz, the next phase could be broader, harsher, and more devastating.

This is why the MOU is so unstable. It is both an offramp and a threat. It is a negotiation document sitting on top of a battlefield.

The 60 Day Window Is Not Accidental

The 60 day negotiation period is not just diplomatic timing. It is political timing.

It places the next major decision point right in the middle of the U.S. midterm campaign season. That matters. The regime understands American politics. It understands media pressure. It understands anti war narratives. It understands the instinct of Western political systems to fatigue under sustained crisis.

Iran’s hardliners have used delay tactics for decades. Stretch the talks. Split the coalition. Exploit elections. Wait for domestic pressure to build. Make the other side pay a political cost for escalation. Then present minimal concessions as historic breakthroughs.

That is the likely play here.

The regime will try to create maximum pressure on Trump not to escalate before the midterms. It will push the narrative that diplomacy is working, that Trump risks blowing up peace, that Israel is the spoiler, that Bibi and Trump are falling out, that America is isolated, that the Gulf wants calm, and that Iran has survived the storm.

This is where cognitive warfare becomes central.

As the kinetic conflict takes less of a role, the irregular, economic, and cognitive dimensions now move to the front. Iran wants to win the perception battle. It wants to show Iran standing tall, Trump boxed in, Israel isolated, and the U.S. political system divided. It wants anti Trump, anti Israel, and anti war factions in the West to absorb and amplify the regime’s preferred narrative.

And many will.

Some will do it knowingly. Others will do it because they dislike Trump, dislike Bibi, or reflexively assume any U.S. or Israeli pressure campaign is the real cause of instability. Either way, the result is the same: the regime’s information campaign gets laundered through Western discourse.

That is the cognitive front.

But there is another side to the timing.

More pragmatic economic and political elites inside Iran may be worried about what happens if Trump does well in the midterms. A stronger Trump after the midterms could have more room to escalate on every front: military, economic, cyber, covert, diplomatic, and financial. If that happens, the carrot may shrink and the stick may get much bigger.

So the 60 day window cuts both ways.

The hardliners see time.

The pragmatists see risk.

The Conflict Is Moving Into the Gray Zone

This is the bigger point I have been warning about for a while.

The kinetic conflict may be slowing, but the war is not ending. It is changing form.

We are now watching the next stage of irregular warfare, economic warfare, and cognitive warfare play out in real time.

Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. Navy. It needs to raise the cost of global commerce.

Iran does not need to defeat Israel conventionally. It needs to keep Israel tied down across multiple fronts.

Iran does not need to win a clean propaganda victory. It just needs to make Western publics confused, divided, tired, and cynical.

Iran does not need to prove it is innocent. It only needs to convince enough people that everyone is equally guilty.

That is gray zone warfare.

It is not clean. It is not declared. It does not end with a surrender ceremony. It is the space between peace and war where regimes like Iran operate best.

This is why any serious long term agreement must go far beyond centrifuges.

The old JCPOA framework was too narrow because it treated the nuclear file as if it could be separated from the rest of Iran’s threat architecture. It could not. Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missiles, proxy networks, maritime coercion, cyber operations, sanctions evasion, hostage diplomacy, and information warfare are not separate files. They are instruments in the same strategy.

If the next deal only addresses nuclear enrichment while ignoring missiles, proxies, and economic warfare through Hormuz, it will simply recreate the same failure with better branding.

The North Korea Lesson: Iran Found Something More Repeatable Than a Nuke

There is a dangerous similarity between Iran and North Korea, but also an important difference.

North Korea gets leverage from the threat of nuclear escalation. It can threaten to use nuclear weapons, but that is a threat it can only follow through with once. The power is in the threat, not the use.

Iran has now discovered something cheaper, more repeatable, and arguably more immediately useful: economic and trade warfare.

By threatening the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting energy markets, attacking regional stability, and raising shipping and insurance costs, Iran can impose pain on the global economy without crossing the nuclear threshold. It can threaten inflation. It can rattle markets. It can pressure European and Asian energy consumers. It can force Gulf states into crisis management mode. It can make Washington worry about domestic gas prices, interest rates, supply chains, and political blowback.

That is a weapon of mass economic disruption.

And unlike a nuclear weapon, it is repeatable.

Iran’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction has ironically helped it stumble into another form of mass coercion: the ability to threaten global economic stability through irregular warfare.

This must be central to any longer term deal.

A serious agreement cannot only say Iran will not build a nuclear weapon. It must address Iran’s ballistic missile program. It must address support for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and other proxies. It must address the regime’s ability to use maritime disruption as leverage. It must address Iran’s capacity to hold global markets hostage every time negotiations stall.

Otherwise the lesson Iran learns is simple: close or threaten Hormuz, create global panic, then get paid to reopen it.

That is not peace. That is extortion with diplomatic stationery.

The Risk of a Moscow Style Iran

There is one possible outcome that may be better for the West, but still deeply unsatisfying for the Iranian people.

The pressure created by this MOU, the reconstruction carrot, and the threat of future escalation could strengthen the more pragmatic economic and political elite inside Iran. It could create enough internal pressure to sideline some of the hardest hardliners. It could move Iran away from pure revolutionary absolutism and toward a more transactional, nationalist, oligarchic model.

In other words, a Moscow style oligopoly or kleptocracy.

That would not be democracy. It would not be justice. It would not be the free Iran that millions of Iranians deserve. It would not fully answer for the regime’s crimes, corruption, repression, executions, internet shutdowns, proxy wars, or theft of the country’s future.

But it could be a step away from revolutionary theocracy.

And geopolitically, that matters.

A more pragmatic Iran could be easier for the West and Arab states to deal with. It could be less ideologically committed to permanent confrontation. It could be more open to trade, investment, reconstruction, and regional normalization. It could offer Iranians more personal freedoms, more economic opportunity, and more room to breathe.

That is not the end state. But regime change rarely happens in one clean leap.

Sometimes it happens through fractures. Sometimes it happens when hardliners lose control of the economic class. Sometimes it happens when the people who benefited from the system decide the system is now a threat to their own survival.

This MOU could accelerate that process.

Or it could rescue the regime.

That is the danger.

The Family Compound That Became a Ruin

The Islamic Republic began with a utopian promise.

Khomeini and the revolutionaries claimed they were building something pure, righteous, independent, and just. A new model. A revolutionary home for the faithful. A giant family compound for the nation, built on ideology, sacrifice, and divine legitimacy.

Forty seven years later, the compound is a disaster.

The roof leaks. The foundation is cracked. The wiring is dangerous. The walls are full of mold. The children have moved out or want to. The bills are unpaid. The neighbors are angry. The patriarch still insists the original blueprint was perfect and the problem is everyone else’s lack of faith.

That is Iran under the Islamic Republic.

Now the West and regional powers are effectively standing outside offering a reconstruction package. Money. Relief. Trade. A way to rebuild. A chance to stop the bleeding.

But the problem is not just the house.

The problem is the people who still claim the right to own it.

Most of the family wants change. The younger generation wants a future. The professional class wants normalcy. The business class wants access to the world. Even some of the older insiders know the current structure is unsustainable.

But the original owners of the failed idea will not sell. They will not move. They will not admit the project failed. They will not let the family choose a new future because doing so would expose the lie at the center of the whole enterprise.

That is the real dilemma.

The West can negotiate repairs. It can offer financing. It can talk about reconstruction. It can draw up plans for a better house.

But if the same people who destroyed the original house still control the keys, there is no real deal to be had.

Why This MOU Will Likely Lead to More Conflict

The MOU may reduce violence in the short term. It may create a diplomatic runway. It may expose fissures inside Iran. It may give pragmatic elites a reason to challenge the hardliners. It may give the Iranian people a little more space, a little more hope, and a little more proof that the regime’s absolutism is the obstacle to their future.

But as long as this regime speaks for the Iranian people, the odds of a durable peace remain low.

Because the regime’s core problem is not tactical. It is existential.

A normal Iran could make a deal.

A pragmatic Iran could make a deal.

An Iran that prioritized its people over its ideology could make a deal.

But the Islamic Republic, as currently constituted, cannot fully make the deal the West, Israel, and the Arab world need, because that deal would require the regime to surrender the very tools that make it powerful: nuclear ambiguity, missiles, proxies, maritime coercion, repression, and the mythology of resistance.

That is why this MOU is not peace.

It is a test.

It tests whether Trump’s carrot and stick strategy can force the regime into a real choice. It tests whether Iran’s pragmatic elites are strong enough to push back against the hardliners. It tests whether the West can resist the cognitive warfare campaign that will try to turn any enforcement action into “warmongering.” It tests whether Israel, the Gulf states, and the U.S. can hold a common line. It tests whether the Iranian people can be given enough space to push history forward.

But unless the regime changes, or is forced by internal fractures to become something fundamentally different, the MOU will likely become what so many Iran agreements become: a pause between rounds.

A 60 day fuse.

A ceasefire dressed as peace.

And another reminder that until the failed owners of the Islamic Republic are removed from the house they ruined, everyone else is negotiating with the arsonists about renovations.

BIAS ALERT: Per my earlier Substack posts, I am Iranian-born, Armenian-Assyrian, and have long detested the regime. Like many Iranian Americans, I have wanted regime change for decades and believed it should have been a central U.S. policy goal - not imposed from outside, but enabled from within.

Decades of failed U.S. policy have left limited options. Anyone looking for a simple explanation of what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are doing should remember: they are working from intelligence very few pundits can access. Most talking heads understand Iran superficially and are often driven by shallow, politically biased narratives.

Below are my comments on the complex Persian puzzle - a term coined by Ken Pollack - based on years of following Iran and the regime. These are my informed “26,430 Iranian rials” - roughly two cents - based on open-source reporting.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

• The U.S. is negotiating with Iran at the exact moment the regime’s internal power structure may be fracturing.

• Since the Green Revolution, I have argued Iran’s breaking point would likely come from one of two dynamics: Khamenei’s death triggering a hardline succession fight, or the regime’s hardline-light kleptocratic class moving against the true ideological zealots out of self-preservation.

• Today, we may be seeing both dynamics at once — creating a narrow opening, but also a serious risk of JCPOA 2.0.

• A real deal could weaken the hardliners, remove Iran’s 60% enriched uranium, impose intrusive oversight, and create more space for the Iranian people.

• A weak deal would kick the nuclear can down the road, let the regime survive, and allow the hardline architecture to rebuild under a more pragmatic face.

• The hardest truth: the Iranian people remain the biggest losers in every near-term scenario. Hardliner survival means repression; hardline-light control means managed kleptocracy; state collapse risks chaos instead of liberty.

• Whether the U.S., China, Russia, the regime, or Iran’s deep-state networks “win” depends on the deal structure. But ordinary Iranians still have no clean, direct path to true freedom.

• As for pundits and talking heads opining on Iran, most have a shallow, wave-top understanding of the issues and are muddying the analysis by tryin to boil a complex issue into concise soundbites.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since the Green Revolution, I have argued the Iranian regime would fracture when one of two dynamics emerged: Khamenei’s death triggering a hardline turf war, or the hardline-light kleptocratic class moving against ideological zealots out of self-preservation. We may now be seeing both, just as the U.S. negotiates with a regime whose real chain of command is unclear.

The central JCPOA mistake was analytical, not just technical. Washington convinced itself it was negotiating with pragmatic moderates, when it was really negotiating with the softer face of a brutal system whose hardline architecture remained intact. That same risk exists today if hardline-light figures cannot deliver real nuclear rollback, relinquish 60% enriched uranium, accept intrusive oversight, and weaken the coercive machinery behind them.

The bleak reality is that the Iranian people lose in every near-term scenario. If hardliners survive, repression continues. If hardline lights win, Iranians may gain breathing room but remain trapped under a managed kleptocracy. If the state collapses, the people could inherit civil conflict, fragmentation, and foreign meddling instead of freedom.

TWO SCENARIOS: Fall of the Iranian Regime

The Islamic Republic has always been less a normal state than a revolutionary cartel - a clerical-security-economic structure held together by ideology, fear, corruption, patronage, and coercion. From the outside, it can look monolithic because everyone chants the same slogans. Inside, the factions, rivalries, money, and fear are real.

The first major breaking point was always Khamenei’s death.

Khamenei functioned as the regime’s ultimate referee. He could bless or bury factions, elevate commanders, manage clerical rivals, protect regime families, and arbitrate between ideological hardliners and transactional profiteers. His role was religious, political, military, economic, and psychological.

Once that referee is gone, the question is not simply, “Who becomes Supreme Leader?” The deeper question is who controls the system that selects, protects, and enforces the next Supreme Leader.

Succession was always likely to be messy. A Mojtaba Khamenei faction may want hereditary continuity; other clerics may reject him as unqualified; IRGC factions may want direct control; and regime managers may want less theocracy - not because they are reformers, but because theocracy has become bad for business.

This is not a clean ideological debate. It is a mob-like succession fight among factions that all want to preserve some version of the system, but disagree over who gets to own it.

The second breaking point was always the regime’s kleptocratic class.

These are the people who made fortunes off sanctions evasion, energy networks, ports, construction, telecom, banking channels, import monopolies, front companies, procurement contracts, and regime-linked industrial assets. Their ideology is survival. Their theology is access. Their revolution is cash flow.

This group is what I call the hardline lights - think Rafsanjani family networks, Araghchi, Zarif, and maybe even Rouhani. Reformers they are not.

They are not moderates in the Western sense. They are regime beneficiaries who understand that nuclear war, economic collapse, or catastrophic confrontation with the U.S. and Israel could destroy what they have accumulated.

If hardline zealots push Iran toward collapse, the hardline lights have an incentive to move against them - not for freedom or justice, but to preserve their money, families, networks, and relevance.

That is what makes this moment volatile. We may be seeing both long-anticipated scenarios at once: a hardliner succession fight after Khamenei and a hardline-light survival play triggered by war, economic pressure, and regime mismanagement.

THE MISTAKE: Treating Iran Like One Unified Regime

One of the enduring mistakes in Iran analysis is assuming the regime is one coherent bloc. It is not.

The split is not simply clerics versus IRGC, reformists versus conservatives, politicians versus soldiers, or even “moderates” versus “hardliners.” That framework is too clean, too Western, and mostly misleading.

There are true hardliners who believe in Khomeini’s political Islam, revolutionary Shi’a ideology, regional hegemony, and the nuclear weapons pathway. They see compromise as weakness and are willing to impose enormous suffering on Iranians to preserve the project.

Then there are hardline lights - kleptocrats, oligarchs, technocrats, sanctions entrepreneurs, and regime managers who still use revolutionary language but are less interested in martyrdom than preservation.

That is why outsiders misread the system. They see a cleric and assume true believer; an IRGC figure and assume ideologue; a diplomat and assume pragmatist; a polished negotiator and assume moderation. None of that is necessarily true.

Iran’s power structure is not divided by title. It is divided by incentives.

Together, these regime-survival factions likely represent less than 20% of Iranians who want some version of the Islamic Republic to survive. The tragedy is that this minority controls the guns, courts, ports, intelligence services, energy sector, nuclear infrastructure, propaganda machinery, and coercive state apparatus.

The 80% may hate the system. But the 20% controls the system. In authoritarian politics, control beats sentiment until the coercive architecture breaks.

OPERATION EPIC FURY May Have Started Regime Change — But Not Finished It

Since Khamenei’s death and the strikes on Iranian leadership, especially those targeting the hardline faction, the regime’s internal balance has likely been badly disrupted.

That does not mean regime change is complete. It means regime change may have started.

Regime change is rarely linear. More often, it begins with fractures: degraded command structures, competing centers of power, security services hedging, elites moving assets, commanders testing loyalties, bureaucrats waiting for clarity, and external actors trying to shape the outcome.

If the hardline command structure has been degraded and parts of the IRGC and clerical-security apparatus no longer operate under one central authority, Iran may not simply be negotiating from weakness. It may be negotiating from internal confusion.

That creates opportunity and danger. Hardline lights may see a window to push ideological hardliners aside and preserve the state. But no one can be certain who has authority to make, enforce, or sabotage a deal.

The central question is simple: who can actually say yes for Iran, make it stick, and prevent hardline spoilers from blowing it up once pressure comes off?

THE JCPOA LESSON: We Mistook the Regime’s Face for the Regime’s Power

SIDE NOTE - On of the individuals in this picture was subject to investigations regarding his ties to networks linked to the Iranian regime. The FBI scrutinized his security clearance, with investigations exploring both the alleged mishandling of classified documents and his associations with figures linked to Iran. [1, 2, 3]

The Obama administration’s core analytical failure during the JCPOA was assuming the West was negotiating with pragmatic or moderate leaders inside Iran.

Rouhani and Zarif were sold to the West as polished, reasonable, reform-minded faces. They spoke the language Western diplomats wanted to hear and looked like leaders Washington could do business with.

The regime understood Western eagerness. Washington wanted a deal, Europe wanted commercial reopening, and the foreign policy establishment wanted to prove diplomacy could tame the Islamic Republic. Tehran offered the presentable side of a brutal system while the hardline architecture stayed intact. The long-term result was regime preservation.

The same danger exists today. Figures like Araghchi or other transactional hardline-light faces may sit at the table, but the real question is whether they control the networks needed to deliver serious nuclear concessions - or whether they are simply the diplomatic mask while hardliners delay, rebuild, and maneuver.

A barking regime can still put a polished negotiator at the table. A brutal system can still send a smiling diplomat to Geneva. A fractured regime can still pretend it speaks with one voice.

We should not confuse tone with control. That was the JCPOA mistake, and it cannot be repeated under more dangerous conditions.

THE NEGOTIATION PROBLEM: A Deal Is Only as Strong as the Faction Behind It

The current negotiation track should be viewed less as a traditional diplomatic process and more as a test of Iran’s internal power structure.

The U.S. may be negotiating over nuclear issues, maritime security, sanctions, regional escalation, proxies, enriched uranium, or economic channels. Beneath all of that is a more basic question: which Iranian faction is strong enough to deliver compliance?

If the hardline lights are negotiating because they gained leverage, that may be an ugly but useful opening. If they are negotiating because hardliners temporarily allowed them to play the reasonable face, that is another matter.

The former could produce de-escalation. The latter could produce JCPOA 2.0 - a pause, not a settlement.

Policymakers need to be brutally honest about what is being tested. It is not just Iran’s willingness to sign; it is Iran’s ability to comply. It is whether coercive institutions, enrichment networks, missile programs, proxies, ports, intelligence services, and IRGC factions actually stand down.

In a normal state, the government signs and the state implements. In Iran, especially now, the faction that signs may not be the faction that controls implementation.

THREE PATHS FORWAR

1. The Bad Option - Which May Be the Only Good Option

The least bad outcome is that hardline lights use the weakening of the true hardline base, combined with economic collapse, to push ideological hardliners out of power.

This would not be democracy, justice, or the Iranian people fully reclaiming their country. It would be a hardline-light, oligarch-managed transition - a faux democracy with some freedoms, some opening to the West, and enough continuity to prevent total collapse.

That is morally unsatisfying. It would leave many regime profiteers intact and let people who benefited from repression, corruption, sanctions evasion, and regional adventurism reinvent themselves as pragmatic national saviors.

But it may still be the only realistic near-term pathway that avoids two worse outcomes: a hardline nuclear regime or a Syria-style state collapse.

A hardline-light faction could be open to a nuclear deal, normalization with neighbors, reduced conflict with Israel, and a more workable relationship with the West. But there is one hard condition: Iran must relinquish its 60% enriched uranium and accept intrusive foreign oversight of a truly peaceful nuclear program.

A deal that leaves Iran with the infrastructure, material, and know-how to climb back toward a weapon is not a deal. It is a future war with better stationery.

The hardline lights do not need to be trusted. They need to be constrained. Self-preservation can be useful. It is not moderation.

2. The Worst Option - Kicking the Nuclear Can Down the Road

The more likely bad outcome is that after months of conflict, pressure, and negotiations, everyone declares victory over a shallow deal.

The U.S. claims it avoided a wider war. Iran claims it survived. Markets calm. The Strait stabilizes. Diplomats applaud themselves. The media calls it de-escalation. And the nuclear issue gets kicked down the road.

A weak deal with an emboldened hardline regime would not solve the core problem. It would delay it and teach Tehran that if it survives the pressure cycle, the West will eventually take the off-ramp and call it strategy.

That is how authoritarian regimes learn. They absorb pressure, manipulate process, split Western coalitions, buy time, offer tactical concessions, pocket relief, and rebuild.

If the current conflict ends with a shallow agreement that does not resolve enriched uranium, impose meaningful oversight, address weaponization pathways, and constrain coercive networks, then we will not have solved the crisis.

We will have scheduled the next one - with greater nuclear overtones, more hardened infrastructure, a more experienced regime, and a more divided West.

3. The Worst-Worst Option - Internal Collapse and Regional Fragmentation

The lowest-probability but highest-impact scenario is that the internal mob-like turf war continues, hardline lights fail to consolidate control, and no nuclear deal emerges.

The economy collapses. The center weakens. Borders become porous. Arms flow into Kurdistan Province, the Azeri provinces, and Baluch areas in the southeast. Iran’s crisis stops being a regime crisis and becomes a regional fragmentation crisis.

If conflict turns ethnic, it could pull in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kurdish networks across Iraq/Syria/Turkey/Iran, and potentially Baluch movements in Iran and Pakistan.

That is not just an Iranian civil war scenario. It is a regional state-fracture scenario at the intersection of the Gulf, Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and global energy markets.

This is the scenario nobody should want. It could produce militias, ethnic fragmentation, foreign intervention, proxy competition, humanitarian collapse, energy shocks, and a long-running security nightmare.

Regime collapse does not automatically produce liberation. Sometimes it produces a vacuum, and vacuums in this region do not stay empty for long.

Russia would look for leverage; China for access and energy security; Turkey and Azerbaijan at Kurdish and Azeri dynamics; Pakistan at Baluchistan; Israel and the Gulf at missiles, proxies, and nuclear material. The U.S. would be pulled back in whether it wanted to be or not.

That is why the collapse scenario deserves attention: not to paralyze strategy, but to discipline it.

WINNERS & LOSERS: The Iranian People Lose Either Way

The hardest part of this analysis is also the most obvious: regardless of which scenario plays out, the biggest losers are the Iranian people.

If hardliners survive, Iranians remain trapped under the same ideological-security state: guns pointed inward, courts used for repression, the economy captured by insiders, and the nuclear program used as a shield for regime survival.

If hardline lights win, Iranians may get more breathing room - more social space, economic opening, less aggressive morality policing, maybe cosmetic political participation. But they likely remain under a managed kleptocracy. Better than hardline theocracy, maybe. Freedom, no.

If the state collapses, Iranians may suffer civil conflict, militias, ethnic fragmentation, foreign meddling, economic ruin, and regional proxy competition. The regime may fall, but the people may inherit chaos instead of liberty.

That is why this moment should not be romanticized. Regime change may have started, but it does not automatically mean democratic transition. It can mean factional consolidation, oligarchic survival, civil war, a worse regime, or a managed transition where ordinary people accept half-freedoms because the alternative is collapse.

The Iranian people deserve true freedom. The current structure does not offer them a clean direct route to it.

Who wins depends almost entirely on whether there is a deal - and what kind.

A weak deal makes the regime and deep-state networks the winners: hardliners survive, hardline lights preserve money and access, the regime gets time and legitimacy, the West gets a headline, and Iranians get another version of the same cage.

A strong deal that strips Iran of 60% enriched uranium, imposes intrusive verification, limits the nuclear pathway, and weakens the hardline faction gives the U.S. and allies a strategic win. China and Russia lose influence if Iran becomes less isolated and less dependent on them.

No deal and a drawn-out conflict could benefit China and Russia by draining the U.S., destabilizing energy markets, distracting Washington, and keeping Iran dependent on authoritarian patrons. Hardliners may also use pressure to rally loyalists, purge rivals, and justify repression.

If Iran fragments, almost everyone loses - but Iranians lose first and most.

The U.S. can win if the deal is real. The regime can win if the deal is shallow. China and Russia can win if the conflict becomes a quagmire. The Iranian deep state can win if it repackages itself as pragmatic while preserving the coercive core.

But the Iranian people are almost guaranteed to lose in every near-term scenario. Their best realistic outcome may be more space, less repression, and a weakened hardline state. That is not nothing. But it is not freedom.

THE REAL STRATEGIC PROBLEM

This leaves an uncomfortable conclusion: the first bad option may be the only good option available in the near term.

A hardline-light deal would be morally unsatisfying. It would leave many regime profiteers intact and likely produce a managed opening rather than true freedom.

But if it removes the 60% enriched uranium, imposes real oversight, reduces regional escalation, and creates more social space for Iranians, it may be the least bad bridge out of the crisis.

The key is not to mistake that bridge for the destination.

The Iranian people deserve far more than a reshuffled kleptocracy. They deserve freedom from clerical rule, IRGC coercion, corruption, censorship, hostage diplomacy, gender apartheid, and the suffocating machinery of the Islamic Republic.

But U.S. policymakers still have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it were.

Right now, that world includes a fractured regime, a weakened but dangerous hardline faction, and a pragmatic regime class looking for a way to save itself.

The opportunity is that pressure may finally be forcing long-predicted fractures inside the regime. The trap is that those fractures could produce cosmetic rearrangement instead of strategic change.

A hardline-light faction may cut a deal to survive. That does not mean it has changed. It means it has calculated. The West can use that calculation, but only if it remains clear-eyed.

This is not just about Iran. Both Xi and Putin face major defeat or victory based on where the conflict goes and what a deal looks like.

FOREIGN & DOMESTIC: The Three Forces Working Against a Deal

THE REGIME - First, true hardliners inside Iran still want the status quo. They believe in the revolutionary project, regional hegemony, and a nuclear future. They will not surrender the nuclear pathway easily because it is their insurance policy.

For them, the nuclear program is regime survival, deterrence, prestige, leverage, and ideological validation - the ultimate guarantee that the Islamic Republic cannot be treated like a normal weak state.

XI & PUTIN - Second, Xi and Putin benefit from either a hardline Iran or a drawn-out quagmire.

A pragmatic Iran that normalizes with the West, reduces dependence on Moscow and Beijing, and becomes less useful as an anti-American pressure point is bad for both Russia and China. They would rather see Iran hostile, unstable, dependent, or distracting.

For Moscow, Iran is useful as a military, diplomatic, and sanctions-evasion partner. For Beijing, Iran is an energy source, geopolitical wedge, and anti-Western pressure node.

ANTI TRUMP FACTION - Third, the Western information environment is already compromised by cognitive warfare.

Anti-Trump factions, regime apologists, Moscow and Beijing-aligned narratives, and media ecosystems hungry for a “deal” can all amplify Tehran’s preferred messaging.

The regime does not need to win conventionally if it can convince enough Western audiences that pressure is reckless, illegal, immoral, expensive, or politically impossible.

That is the point of cognitive warfare: turn Western impatience, elite division, media framing, humanitarian concern, and the desire for peace into leverage for regime survival and strategic delay.

This does not make every critic of U.S. policy a regime asset. But Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing understand how to exploit Western divisions tied to Trump, war fatigue, energy prices, and fear of escalation. The information battlespace is now part of the negotiation.

ESCALATION FOR DE-ESCALATION

This conflict remains a continuation of escalation for de-escalation.

The direct conflict has given way to irregular warfare: economic warfare, cognitive warfare, maritime coercion, proxy pressure, sanctions gamesmanship, and diplomatic delay.

Iran cannot defeat the U.S. and Israel conventionally, so it shifts the fight to other domains: oil, Hormuz, Western impatience, U.S. midterm politics, media narratives, and negotiations themselves.

The current phase should not be mistaken for de-escalation simply because diplomats are talking. In many conflicts, negotiations are not the opposite of warfare; they are one of its instruments.

Iran has long understood this. The regime negotiates under pressure, uses the process to divide adversaries, tests how badly Washington wants a deal, and then decides whether survival requires concession, delay, or escalation.

For now, the sides remain at an impasse. Trump will not give the regime an easy win. The hardliners will not give Trump a clean victory. The hardline lights may want a deal, but may not control enough of the system to deliver one.

So more escalation should be expected - regular and irregular. More negotiations should also be expected. That is not a contradiction. It is the strategy.

The regime is trying to survive to a post-Trump window. The West is betting that pressure, collapse, and factional fracture can produce a more pragmatic counterparty before hardliners reconstitute.

That is the narrow lane - and the danger. This is how the JCPOA happened: the West wanted a deal, the regime provided a pragmatic face, and hardliners lived to fight another day.

President Trump has shown a willingness to use force when needed. Operation Epic Fury and Midnight Hammer demonstrated that. But conventional warfare is increasingly taking a backseat to irregular warfare - cognitive, economic, unconventional, and asymmetric pressure.

The threat of renewed military action remains on the table. That does not mean an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style ground campaign. If escalation comes, it would more likely involve renewed U.S.-led strikes against IRGC and hardliner assets, infrastructure, and resources, while Israel continues targeting key hardline leadership.

Before that next level of escalation, all avenues for a negotiated peace must be pursued - and appear to be underway - regardless of how likely or unlikely those scenarios may be.

CONCLUSION: Do Not Confuse the Face at the Table with the Power Behind the Curtain

The central question in U.S.-Iran negotiations is not whether Iran is willing to talk.

The central question is whether the faction talking can deliver - and whether the faction that can deliver is willing to surrender the nuclear pathway, accept real oversight, and reduce the regime’s regional war machine.

We are in the middle of regime change, but we do not yet know what kind. It could produce a hardline-light transition, a shallow nuclear deal that empowers the same regime under a different face, internal collapse and fragmentation, or something worse.

That uncertainty should not lead to paralysis. But it should force discipline.

The West should keep pressure on true hardliners, exploit regime fractures, demand real nuclear rollback, and avoid declaring victory over a cosmetic deal.

The Iranian people deserve freedom. But the immediate strategic challenge is preventing a hardline nuclear regime, avoiding regional collapse, and ensuring any negotiated outcome weakens the Islamic Republic’s coercive architecture rather than giving it time to recover.

The warning is simple: do not confuse the person at the table with the power behind the curtain. Do not pursue a deal for the sake of a deal. Just like the JCPOA, a bad deal is often worse than no deal at all.

Iran may be negotiating. But the real question is who in Tehran can say yes, who can enforce yes, and who is waiting to sabotage yes the moment pressure comes off.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: Operation Economic Fury appears designed to do what direct kinetic operations alone cannot: keep relentless pressure on the Iranian regime while avoiding a strategy built only around direct military escalation. It blends economic warfare, lawfare, maritime pressure, sanctions enforcement, and cognitive warfare to deepen Tehran’s internal contradictions. But Iran is fighting back in the information space by trying to convert economic pain into global political pressure against the Trump administration, betting that anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and anti-war constituencies in the West will amplify Tehran’s preferred narrative while downplaying the regime’s own atrocities against the Iranian people.

Unfortunately the Iranian regime has had absolute control over nearly 90% of the population. The initial kinetic impact of Operation Epic Fury degraded the regime and their war fighting capabilities. Now Economic Fury is meant to assert further pressure on the Iranian economy and regime to help bring about change from within.

IRREGULAR AND ECONOMIC WARFARE

Operation Economic Fury and the Irregular War for Iran’s Future

Operation Epic Fury may have degraded the Iranian regime’s leadership structure and conventional war fighting capacity, but Operation Economic Fury appears aimed at something more subtle and potentially more durable: the internal balance of power inside the Islamic Republic.

This is not simply sanctions policy. It is not just financial enforcement. And it is not merely a substitute for direct military action. It is a form of irregular warfare.

The Trump administration seems to be shifting from the visible destruction of regime assets to the less visible but arguably more consequential campaign to squeeze, isolate, discredit, and fracture the regime from within. Recent reporting indicates that the U.S. has continued applying pressure through sanctions on Iranian currency exchanges and front companies tied to oil revenue laundering, while also maintaining maritime economic pressure through a Gulf of Oman blockade that the Pentagon says has cost Iran billions in lost oil revenue.

That matters because the center of gravity may no longer be just Iran’s missile sites, nuclear infrastructure, or naval harassment capability. The center of gravity may now be the regime’s internal cohesion. And that cohesion is under strain.

Since Epic Fury, the removal or weakening of key leaders appears to have accelerated a hardline power scramble inside Iran. Reuters has reported that the IRGC has assumed a more dominant wartime role, weakening traditional clerical authority and pushing real power further into the hands of the military-security elite. That is the critical backdrop to Economic Fury. The question is no longer only whether the United States can impose costs on Tehran. The question is whether those costs can be used to reshape the internal incentives of the people who still have something to lose inside the Iranian system.

The Iranian regime is not monolithic. It is a coalition of clerical power centers, IRGC networks, intelligence services, industrial managers, oil and energy elites, financial facilitators, bazaar-linked commercial actors, sanctioned logistics networks, and ideological enforcers. For decades, the hardest of the hardliners have dominated that coalition by controlling coercive power, revolutionary legitimacy, and access to the regime’s security apparatus.

But when leadership decapitation, battlefield degradation, sanctions pressure, maritime disruption, and oil revenue constraints converge, the internal bargain starts to change.

The hardliners can still threaten. They can still repress. They can still chant ideology. But they may not be able to deliver stability, revenue, protection, or elite continuity.

That is where Operation Economic Fury becomes strategically significant.

ECONOMIC LEVERS

Economic pressure as irregular warfare - Irregular warfare is not limited to militias, insurgencies, or proxy forces. At its core, it is about using indirect means to weaken an adversary’s political will, legitimacy, decision-making, and internal structure.

Economic Fury appears to fit that model.

The sanctions on Iranian exchange houses and associated front companies are not merely punitive. They target the financial plumbing that allows the regime to convert oil revenue into usable currency, sustain military networks, and fund proxy or security operations. According to reporting on the Treasury actions, the targeted exchanges were accused of laundering billions in foreign currency tied to oil revenue, including funds received in Chinese yuan and converted into dollars and euros through international shell companies.

That is not just economics. That is battlefield preparation by financial means.

Every disrupted exchange mechanism increases friction inside the regime. Every front company exposed raises the risk for facilitators. Every sanctioned node forces Tehran to reroute money through narrower, more expensive, and more vulnerable channels. Every delay in converting oil revenue into usable funds creates pressure on the people who rely on that money to pay security forces, subsidize loyalists, reward insiders, and maintain elite discipline.

Authoritarian regimes do not survive only on ideology. They survive on coercion, patronage, fear, and cash flow.

Economic Fury is aimed at all four.

LAWFARE 101

Lawfare as a weapon against regime networks - There is also a lawfare dimension.

Lawfare is often misunderstood as simply using courts or international institutions. In this context, it is broader: the use of legal authorities, sanctions designations, financial restrictions, export controls, maritime enforcement, forfeiture exposure, and secondary sanctions risk to make participation in Iran’s regime economy more dangerous.

For Tehran, this creates a widening circle of fear.

The regime’s senior ideologues may be willing to absorb sanctions as the cost of revolutionary resistance. But bankers, shipping facilitators, commodity brokers, exchange operators, energy executives, industrial managers, insurers, front-company nominees, and foreign intermediaries are often less ideological. They are transactional. They operate on risk-reward calculations.

Lawfare changes the math.

When the United States designates exchange networks, threatens secondary exposure, and signals enforcement against the entities that keep Iran’s war economy functioning, it does more than freeze assets. It tells every commercial actor around the regime: the cost of proximity is going up.

That message is especially important inside Iran.

The “hardline-light” factions and economic elites may not be pro-Western. They may not be democratic reformers. They may not be morally admirable. But they may be rational. They may understand that endless escalation, collapsing oil revenue, isolated ports, disrupted currency flows, and IRGC overreach could destroy the system that protects their wealth and status.

Economic Fury appears designed to sharpen that realization.

HEARTS, MINDS, & THE BOTTOMLINE

Cognitive warfare: making regime elites doubt the future - The third layer is cognitive warfare.

The objective is not only to damage the regime’s balance sheet. It is to damage its confidence.

Cognitive warfare targets perception, morale, legitimacy, and decision-making. In Iran’s case, the audience is not only the Iranian public or the outside world. It is also the regime elite itself.

The message is straightforward: the hardliners are no longer guardians of the Islamic Republic’s survival. They are becoming the principal threat to it.

That is a powerful wedge.

For decades, the IRGC and clerical hardliners have claimed that ideological defiance protects Iran. They told the system that resistance would produce strength, deterrence, and prestige. But after Epic Fury, that narrative is harder to sustain. If key leaders have been removed, conventional capabilities degraded, oil flows disrupted, maritime access constrained, currency channels exposed, and negotiations stalled because the hardliners cannot agree on concessions, then the regime’s internal constituencies must confront a dangerous possibility:

The hardliners may not be saving the system. They may be driving it toward collapse.

This is where the infighting matters.

As hardline factions turn inward and fight each other for post-Epic Fury power, they risk locking out the very actors who might otherwise stabilize the regime: pragmatic clerics, technocrats, industrial elites, energy-sector power brokers, and less vitriolic security figures who want the Islamic Republic to survive, but not necessarily under maximalist IRGC domination.

Economic Fury appears designed to incentivize those actors to move.

Not because they suddenly embrace liberal democracy. Not because they have abandoned the regime’s worldview. But because survival may require sidelining the most reckless hardliners before they bring the entire system down with them.

NON KINETIC ESCALATION

Why this may be preferable to immediate kinetic escalation - The Trump administration appears to be trying to maintain escalation pressure while avoiding sole reliance on direct kinetic conflict. That does not mean kinetic options are off the table. Trump has reportedly said he is dissatisfied with Iran’s latest proposal and that additional military options remain available.

But the administration also appears to be operating in a gray zone between war and peace. Trump has told Congress that hostilities have ended, while reporting indicates U.S. forces remain in the region and economic-maritime pressure continues. That has produced legal and political debate under the War Powers framework, especially around whether the blockade and ongoing military posture constitute continued hostilities.

That ambiguity may be part of the point.

Economic Fury allows Washington to keep tightening the screws while reducing the political and operational burden of continuous large-scale strikes. It keeps pressure on Iran’s leadership, sustains leverage in negotiations, signals resolve to regional partners, and forces Tehran to fight on multiple fronts: economic, legal, diplomatic, maritime, informational, and internal.

This is escalation by other means.

It is also a recognition that regime weakening is not always achieved by one dramatic military act. Sometimes it is achieved through cumulative stress: the inability to pay, the inability to move oil, the inability to access currency, the inability to present unity, the inability to reassure insiders, and the inability to convince elites that the current leadership can protect them.

REGIME CONTRADICTIONS

The regime’s internal contradiction - The Iranian regime’s core problem is that the faction best equipped to seize power after crisis — the IRGC hardline security elite — may also be the faction most likely to make the crisis permanent.

That creates a contradiction.

The IRGC can dominate the streets, command coercive networks, and control wartime decision-making. But it cannot easily restore investor confidence, normalize trade, reopen financial channels, reassure energy elites, or give pragmatic clerics a stable path back into influence. Its power is coercive, not restorative.

That matters because authoritarian systems require more than repression. They require elite buy-in.

If the hardliners continue turning inward, fighting one another, and monopolizing post-Epic Fury power, they may alienate the economic and clerical constituencies that understand the regime cannot survive as a permanent bunker state. Economic Fury appears designed to widen that gap.

The pressure campaign tells the Iranian elite: the longer the hardliners remain in control, the more expensive your future becomes.

That is not regime change by invasion. It is regime weakening through internal incentive collapse.

STRATEGIC PATIENCE (Do We Have It?)

The temptation in Washington is always to search for clean timelines and decisive endpoints. But Iran does not operate that way. The Islamic Republic has survived because it understands time, ambiguity, factional maneuvering, and calibrated violence. It knows how to absorb punishment. It knows how to stall. It knows how to pretend weakness is patience and delay is strategy.

That is why Operation Economic Fury cannot be judged in days or even weeks.

Its purpose is not simply to force an immediate surrender. Its purpose is to make the existing power arrangement inside Iran harder to sustain. It is meant to convince enough influential insiders that continued hardline dominance is a liability. It is meant to turn financial pain into political pressure, legal exposure into elite anxiety, and cognitive doubt into factional movement.

If Operation Epic Fury began the process by degrading leadership and conventional capacity, Operation Economic Fury may be the follow-on campaign designed to exploit the opening.

The hardliners are now fighting to inherit what remains of the system. But inheritance is not the same as control. Control requires revenue. It requires legitimacy. It requires elite confidence. It requires the ability to promise survival.

Economic Fury is aimed directly at that promise.

CAUTION: Is the Iranian regime winning the cognitive battle? Some would argue YES, and very decisively. Thanks to a vehement contingency of anti-Trump, anti-Israel and anti-Waring West faction in Western media and society, any messaging coming from the Iranian regime that paint Iran as one monolithic “victim” of Trump or Israel, while overlooking the regime and hardliner atrocities - is always amplified in Western media and social media.

We spoke to the man making viral Lego-style AI videos for Iran. Experts say it’s powerful propaganda (BBC News)

Image is from a video from Explosive Media, a media company in Tehran responsible for putting out pro-Iranian AI generated videos.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The war after the war - The next phase of the Iran conflict may not look like the first phase.

It may involve fewer dramatic strikes and more financial strangulation. Fewer visible explosions and more sanctions designations. Fewer battlefield movements and more maritime pressure. Fewer public threats and more quiet legal exposure of the networks that keep the regime alive.

That does not make it less aggressive.

It may make it more strategically dangerous for Tehran.

The regime is betting that Washington lacks patience. It is betting that Western political pressure, energy-price anxiety, legal controversy, and fear of escalation will force the United States to accept a cosmetic pause and call it peace.

But conflict and regime change are not linear. They do not move on clean timelines. They unfold through pressure, fracture, adaptation, and miscalculation.

Iran understands that. Washington should too.

Operation Economic Fury, if sustained, is not merely an economic campaign. It is an irregular warfare campaign aimed at the regime’s internal architecture. Its success will not be measured only by how much revenue Iran loses, but by whether the pressure changes the calculations of those inside the regime who still have the power — and the incentive — to move against the hardest of the hardliners before they drag the entire system into ruin.

BIAS ALERT: Similar to all my prior posting, as an Iranian American who fled during the 1979 Revolution I have detested the Iranian regime and everything it stands for. As a member of the diaspora, I’ve long advocated for regime change, but believe the diaspora has a partial vote. The 80+ million people who have lived under this oppressive regime HAVE THE FULL VOTE, and need to take control of their destiny. It is not the West’s role to enforce regime change, but level the playing field so that the people can eventually rise up and take back Iran.

BOTTM LINE UP FRONT: Operation Epic Fury has not “finished” regime change in Iran. It has started it. The operation’s stated goal IS NOT regime change. However by degrading and decapitating the Iranian regime’s war fighting and nuclear weapons development capabilities, changes in the regime have begun.

By degrading the regime’s leadership structure and conventional military capabilities, the operation has created the conditions for a mob-like turf war inside the Islamic Republic. The danger is that this fight produces only a different version of the same regime — or worse, a more openly IRGC-dominated one (without clerical guard rails). The opportunity is that continued pressure through Operation Economic Fury could accelerate internal fractures, weaken the hardline base, and force more pragmatic factions to challenge the true believers before they drag the entire regime into collapse. Then we will have clarity with whom we are negotiating with and towards what outcomes.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Operation Epic Fury should be understood as the beginning of regime change in Iran — not the end of it.

Its early success has been in decapitation and degradation. The operation weakened key regime leadership nodes, disrupted command structures, and degraded Iran’s conventional warfighting capabilities. That matters because Iran cannot defeat the United States or Israel in a conventional fight. Its strength has always been survival, coercion, proxy warfare, economic blackmail, and narrative manipulation — not battlefield superiority.

But the more important consequence may be what Epic Fury has triggered inside the regime.

The Islamic Republic is now entering a dangerous internal phase. With leadership structures damaged and authority increasingly unclear, a mob-like turf war is beginning among bad factions of the regime: IRGC networks, clerical camps, security figures, parliament power brokers, and economic stakeholders all trying to protect their position in a system starting to crack. That distinction is critical.

If regime change stops here, Operation Epic Fury could ultimately be viewed as a failure. Not because it failed militarily, but because it may have only weakened one version of the regime while allowing another hardline faction to consolidate power. A post-crisis Iran dominated by the IRGC, shadow security networks, or a militarized succession council would not represent liberation. It would be a reshuffling of the regime’s internal mafia. That is why the next phase matters.

So when people “FINISH THE JOB”, it should mean let the process of regime change to continue to play out.

As hardliners fight for power, the hardline base itself could begin to degrade. Their competition could expose them, paralyze them, and weaken the system they are trying to inherit. This is where Operation Economic Fury becomes strategically important.

Economic pressure can force a different calculation inside the regime. Powerful regime-linked actors in the military, clerical, industrial, energy, and sanctions-evasion networks have enormous wealth at risk. They are not democrats. But they may be pragmatic enough to understand that the hardliners’ pursuit of hegemony, nuclear weapons, and direct confrontation with Israel and the United States could destroy everything they have built and stolen.

That pressure could create room for less hardline, more pragmatic factions to rise against the true believers — not out of virtue, but self-preservation. That may not be the final answer, but it could further fracture the regime and create more room for the Iranian people to move.

REGIME FRACTURING, WHO IS IN CHARGE

Iran’s Power Struggle Is Not a Negotiating Problem. It Is a Regime-Structure Problem.

The United States is trying to negotiate with Iran, but the most important question right now is not simply what does Tehran want? It is who in Tehran can actually say yes?

That question used to have a clearer answer. For decades, however opaque the Islamic Republic appeared from the outside, the final decision-maker was still understood to be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He balanced the clerics, the Revolutionary Guards, the parliament, the judiciary, the intelligence services, and the various economic power centers that feed off the regime. He was not merely a spiritual figurehead. He was the ultimate arbiter of the system. That world is gone.

Since the decapitation and degradation campaign of Operation Epic Fury, the regime has entered a different phase. The old players are dead, wounded, sidelined, exposed, or fighting to survive. The players we see today are not necessarily the final players we will end up with. In fact, that is the central point. The United States may be negotiating with “Iran,” but Iran itself is no longer operating through one clean chain of command.

Recent reporting points to a fragmented leadership picture, with no single individual clearly calling the shots and the IRGC gaining even more influence over the state’s coercive and economic machinery. One analysis quoted experts saying that while there has not yet been regime change, the structure has changed because new voices have been elevated after previous figures were killed, and the Revolutionary Guards now appear to have even fewer checks on their power.

That is the strategic fog Washington is operating in.

The issue is not that Iran is refusing to negotiate. The issue is that the regime may no longer know who has enough authority to negotiate on behalf of the regime.

MOB/CARTEL STYLE TURF WAR

The regime is beginning to look less like a state and more like a turf war

The current infighting inside Tehran increasingly resembles a mob or cartel like turf war when the crime boss and his lieutenants are removed.

That is not just rhetoric. It is how the system behaves.

The Islamic Republic was always part state, part revolutionary movement, part clerical machine, part security apparatus, and part criminal enterprise. The IRGC is not just a military force. It is a business empire, an intelligence service, an ideological militia, a sanctions-evasion network, a political machine, and a coercive domestic-security force. When the supreme leader sits above it all, the system can pretend it has order. When the supreme leader is removed or incapacitated, the factions begin circling the assets. That is what we are watching now.

You have Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament and former IRGC commander, trying to position himself as a political operator and negotiator. You have Ahmad Vahidi, deeply tied to the Revolutionary Guards and their external-security architecture, reportedly exercising enormous influence over wartime appointments and sensitive state functions. You have Abbas Araghchi, the diplomat, trying to navigate talks while being accused of answering more to the Guards than to the civilian government. You have Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, another deeply rooted IRGC insider, now sitting at the center of the national-security structure. And behind all of them, you have shadowy IRGC networks that may matter more than the formal titles on paper.

Press reporting recently noted President Masoud Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf were seeking Araghchi’s removal, accusing him of following Revolutionary Guard instructions in nuclear talks without properly informing the president. The same report said Araghchi had been coordinating with Vahidi, and that Vahidi had asserted that key sensitive posts must be selected and run directly by the Guards during the wartime emergency.

That is not normal statecraft. That is a regime eating itself.

LESS BAD OPTIONS - NEITHER ARE GOOD

The faction map: bad choices fighting worse choices

Let’s be clear about the players.

Ghalibaf is not a reformer. He is a polished regime insider with an IRGC background, a former Tehran mayor, and now speaker of parliament. He understands power, bureaucracy, and optics. He may want to appear pragmatic, but he comes from the same hardline security ecosystem that has protected the regime for decades.

Vahidi is even more consequential. He is not merely a domestic political figure. He is tied to the IRGC’s most aggressive external-security traditions - IRGC Quds Force. Interpol’s own records show that Ahmad Vahidi was among the individuals for whom Red Notices were approved in connection with Argentina’s investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 150. That background matters because it tells us what faction of the regime he represents: not diplomacy, not normalization, not reform — but hardline revolutionary-security power.

Araghchi is the outlier. He is the diplomat, the negotiator, the face who can sit across from foreign officials and speak the language of process. But even Araghchi is not operating in a vacuum. If recent reporting is accurate, he is caught between the formal civilian government, the parliament, and the Guards. That makes him useful but also vulnerable. He may be the person sent into the room, but that does not mean he is the person empowered to close the deal.

Zolghadr may be one of the most important figures to watch. He is not a new crisis-era actor. He is old regime architecture. Iran International describes him as a foundational IRGC figure whose career spans armed militancy, senior command inside the Guards, and major roles across the political and judicial system. The same report notes that he belongs to the generation that helped transform the IRGC into the backbone of the Islamic Republic as a military, political, and economic power center. Mehr News, an Iranian outlet, lists Zolghadr’s background as commander of the IRGC’s Ramadan Headquarters, chief of staff of the IRGC, deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC, deputy for Basij affairs, deputy interior minister for security and law enforcement, and secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council. It also notes that Ramadan Headquarters helped form the mechanisms and activities later associated with the Quds Force.

That is the profile of a regime enforcer, not a transitional statesman.

The broader picture is simple: with the exception of Araghchi, almost every serious power center now being discussed is either directly IRGC-based, IRGC-adjacent, or dependent on the IRGC for survival. The current leadership and power Struggles in Iran is a complex interplay among the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, Ghalibaf, Vahidi, Araghchi, hardliner factions, and the IRGC as the central military and economic power center.

REGIME CHANGE - PHASE I

Khamenei’s death and the succession war. For the last 20 years, I have made the same point about true Iran regime change: it happens when one of two things occurs.

The first is the death or removal of the supreme leader, which triggers a succession fight the regime cannot neatly control.

That scenario is now no longer theoretical.

Khamenei’s death kicks off a fight between several camps. There are those who want clerical succession through Mojtaba Khamenei. There are those who do not think Mojtaba is qualified. There are those who want a ruling council instead of a single supreme leader. There are those who want to preserve the concept of velayat-e faqih but weaken the clerical monopoly. And there are those, especially within the military-security class, who may no longer want the clergy truly sitting at the top at all.

What Is Velayat-e Faqih? (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

None of these choices are good.

This is not a clean democratic transition. This is a moblike turf war between various bad choices, ranging from bad to potentially worse than what we have today. A Mojtaba succession could preserve the hereditary-clerical model under a weakened but still brutal structure. A council could create paralysis or factional war. An IRGC-dominated order could become more overtly militarized, less religiously constrained, and more operationally aggressive abroad.

Iran International has already described the emerging post-Khamenei order as potentially more dangerous, with analysts warning that an IRGC-dominated leadership could be less constrained by theology and more driven by revenge. One expert described it as “Iranian Revolution 3.0,” with the Guards dominating meaningful decision-making.

That is why the phrase “regime change” needs precision.

A change at the top of the Islamic Republic does not automatically mean liberation for the Iranian people. It could simply mean the clergy lose ground to the Guards. It could mean the regime becomes less theocratic in appearance but more militarized in function. It could mean Iran moves from clerical dictatorship to security-junta dictatorship.

That may be regime change in a narrow technical sense. It is not freedom.

And the most important moral and political point is this: this infighting is taking place among a tiny minority of the country. Less than 10% of Iranians want this regime to remain in power. The overwhelming majority of the Iranian people are not fighting over whether Mojtaba, Ghalibaf, Vahidi, Zolghadr, or some clerical council should rule them. They want the system gone.

The turf war is among the regime’s beneficiaries, not the nation.

REGIME CHANGE - PHASE II

Change scenario: the “hardline lights” protect their money. The second scenario I have long believed could trigger real change is when the so-called “hardline lights” decide that the true hardliners are putting too much money at risk.

This is where the Islamic Republic’s corruption becomes strategically important.

There are regime insiders, clerical families, IRGC-linked businessmen, industrial barons, energy-sector beneficiaries, sanctions-evasion middlemen, and military-economic networks that have accumulated billions of dollars through the Islamic Republic’s system. They are not democrats. They are not pro-Western liberals. They are not friends of the Iranian people.

But they are rational enough to know that if the ideological hardliners keep inviting direct conflict with Israel and/or the United States through their obsession with hegemony, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons, the entire asset base of the regime could be destroyed.

That is the real pressure point.

The hardline lights do not need to become good people. They only need to conclude that the first faction — the apocalyptic hardliners, the Quds Force networks, the clerical absolutists, the revolutionary-security mafia — is now bad for business.

That is when the internal knives come out.

And that is exactly why the current conflict is so dangerous for Tehran: it is introducing both regime-change scenarios at the same time.

Khamenei’s removal has triggered the succession and legitimacy crisis. Operation Epic Fury has degraded military and leadership nodes. Economic pressure is accelerating. The Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island have become a tool of coercion and leverage. The regime is fighting over negotiations, appointments, and survival. The people are suffering under economic collapse. And the regime’s own insiders are beginning to calculate who is protecting their wealth and who is putting it at risk.

Iran International recently reported worsening economic conditions inside Iran, including mass layoffs, sharp increases in basic goods, medicine shortages, food insecurity, inability to pay rent, and an internet blackout that has cut off online work and freelance income for millions. One Iranian parliament member reportedly said the country was nearing “economic collapse.”

That is not background noise. That is the battlefield.

OPERATION EPIC FURRY & IRREGULAR WARFARE

As I have written before, Operation Epic Fury may have begun as a conventional conflict, but it has quickly morphed into irregular warfare.

Iran cannot win a conventional war against the United States and Israel. Tehran knows this. The IRGC knows this. The regime’s survival strategy is not to defeat the U.S. Navy or Israeli airpower in a symmetrical fight. Its strategy is to make the conflict politically, economically, and psychologically expensive enough that Washington loses the will to continue.

That is why the negotiation dance matters.

Iran is not only negotiating for a deal. It is negotiating for time, confusion, division, and narrative advantage. It wants to create the impression that diplomacy is always just one more meeting away, one more mediator away, one more concession away. It wants to split Washington from its allies, split hawks from doves, split economic interests from security interests, and split the American public’s patience from the military realities of the campaign.

It is using economic warfare through the choking of the Strait of Hormuz. It is using cognitive warfare through competing narratives of who is winning. It is using diplomatic warfare through the appearance of negotiations. It is using proxy warfare through external networks. And it is using internal repression to keep the Iranian people from turning military pressure into political revolt.

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a maritime issue. It is Iran’s attempt to convert geography into coercion. Recent reporting said shipping through Hormuz remained muted as Iran-U.S. talks stalled, with Reuters citing limited vessel movement through the waterway. This is the regime’s leverage play: if it cannot win on the battlefield, it will try to squeeze the global economy.

OPERATION EPIC FURY

This is where Operation Economic Fury becomes central.

Operation Epic Fury is degrading the regime’s military, command, and strategic infrastructure. Operation Economic Fury should be understood as the parallel campaign to continue eroding Iran’s economic base, especially the regime-linked financial networks that keep the hardliners alive.

That phrase matters because this is not just sanctions. It is not just pressure for pressure’s sake. It is a deliberate effort to sharpen the internal contradiction inside the regime.

The January uprisings happened because economic pressure was already mounting under Trump’s Iran policy. The people were already squeezed. The regime was already brittle. The security apparatus could still repress, but repression does not solve insolvency. It only delays the political consequences of insolvency.

Operation Economic Fury is meant to accelerate that dynamic.

The goal is to make the hardline lights look at the first faction — the ideological hardliners, the IRGC absolutists, the nuclear maximalists, the clerical succession crowd — and conclude: you are going to get all of us destroyed.

That is when the regime’s own insiders may begin pushing out the hardest hardliners. Not because they love freedom. Not because they suddenly care about the Iranian people. But because they have too much money buried inside Iran’s military, clerical, industrial, and energy complex to let the true believers burn the whole house down.

That is how pressure can create fracture.

And fracture is the precondition for the Iranian people to move.

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

The U.S. should negotiate, but not pretend Iran is normal - None of this means the United States should refuse negotiations. Negotiations can be useful. They can test intentions. They can expose divisions. They can buy operational time. They can force factions to reveal who has authority and who does not.

But Washington should not pretend it is negotiating with a normal state.

It is negotiating with a wounded revolutionary regime, an empowered IRGC, a fractured succession structure, and multiple factions trying to survive the same crisis. It is negotiating with people who may not be able to deliver what they promise. It is negotiating with diplomats who may be overruled by commanders. It is negotiating with commanders who may be challenged by clerics. It is negotiating with clerics who may no longer command fear. It is negotiating with a system whose own people overwhelmingly want it gone.

That is why the current saga is so important.

The question is not whether Iran will sign something. The question is whether the regime that signs it will still exist in the same form six months from now.

The Islamic Republic is entering the phase every mafia-like system eventually fears: the moment when fear no longer flows in one direction. The public fears the regime, but the regime now fears the public. The factions fear each other. The businessmen fear the zealots. The clerics fear the Guards. The Guards fear losing the street. And everyone fears being the next target of either external force or internal betrayal.

That is not stability.

That is pre-collapse behavior.

The West should understand the moment clearly. Overwhelming force alone will not defeat the Islamic Republic. Diplomacy alone will not reform it. Sanctions alone will not collapse it. But pressure, applied across military, economic, informational, and political fronts, can weaken the regime enough that its internal contradictions become unmanageable.

Ultimately, this must be Iran’s fight.

The outside world can weaken the regime, expose its lies, fracture its power centers, deny it nuclear weapons, disrupt its coercive economic tools, and support the Iranian people when the moment comes. But the final defeat of the Islamic Republic will come from within.

And the regime knows it.

That is why it is working overtime to win the narrative war. That is why it wants to look strong when it is weak. Unified when it is fractured. Rational when it is desperate. Popular when it is hated. Negotiating when it is stalling.

Operation Epic Fury exposed the regime’s military vulnerability. Operation Economic Fury can expose its financial vulnerability. But the deeper vulnerability is legitimacy.

Once that goes, no supreme leader, no council, no IRGC commander, no parliament speaker, no diplomat, and no shadowy faction can put the system back together again.

SO WHAT . . . . WHAT DOES IT MATTER

The West must maintain pressure, understand that Iran uses delay and obfuscation, do not accept a bad deal, and recognize that opening the Strait of Hormuz and undermining the regime’s coercive capacity are core U.S. objectives is essential to winning. The hardliners battling for control of Iran are unlikely to surrender in negotiations, breaking their will is essential.

In terms of where the conflict goes from here, the key point is Iran is not trying to win the war conventionally. It is trying to win the irregular front.

The strategic lesson is patience and persistence. The regime is betting we have neither.

Conflict and regime change are not linear. They do not run on predictable paths or clean timelines. We should know that. Iran certainly does. The Islamic Republic has survived for decades by absorbing pressure, exploiting Western impatience, and turning every negotiation into a test of political will. While we’ve focused on conventional warfare, the regime has waged irregular warfare and cognitive warfare very effectively.

If escalation comes, one option to consider is that it may be less about kinetic expansion or boots on the ground, and more about containing and shaping the internal infighting already underway.

Let the factions fight. Watch who survives. Then craft the engagement strategy based on the reality of who is actually left standing. Hopefully the hardliners will be weakened and defeated. We may end-up with a hardline-light faction. However if they are not focused on hegemony, regional conflict, and eradication of the West and Israel, the Iranian people will be on the path to a brighter future.

BIAS Alert: As you know I am critical of the U.S. policy on Iran spanning decades and both sides of the aisle. We’ve often failed to address the threat of the regime and focused on engagement, appeasement, managing and mitigating the risk and as a result have let the cancer know as the regime fester and grow. Nobody wants conflict but sometimes the avoidance of one can lead to a much greater conflict. While striking a deal is essential, a bad deal can often be worst than no deal at all.

Bottom Line Up Front - If you want to understand why the West keeps misreading Iran at the negotiating table, start with taarof. In simple terms, it is a Persian form of layered politeness, indirection, and social positioning where the surface answer is often not the real answer.

At the geopolitical level, the Islamic Republic has turned that instinct into a negotiating method: stretch the process, study the other side’s urgency, get Washington invested in “yes,” then press for the real price. That is why the Iran file has never just been about uranium. It has always also been about time, leverage, psychology, and who gets worn down first.

Once we can get past a deal with Iran, we also need to take account all roads still lead to Beijing. All of our complex geopolitical challenges need to be framed in that light.

Executive Summary

The central Western mistake with Iran is treating negotiation as a linear process with a clear endpoint. Tehran often treats it differently. The visible agreement, framework, or diplomatic breakthrough is often not the end of the bargaining. It is where the more serious asks begin, once the other side is politically and psychologically committed to closing.

That is why taarof matters as more than cultural trivia. It helps explain the larger Iranian style of bargaining: ambiguity, sequencing, face-saving, delay, and preserving leverage until the counterparty is too invested to walk away cleanly. In that sense, Iran often negotiates more like a bazaar power than a conventional status quo state.

The contrast between the JCPOA and Trump’s current approach sits right inside that dynamic. The JCPOA had real technical strengths, but it was too narrow and too tied to a Western belief that process could produce strategic change. Trump’s model is sharper on leverage and red lines, but it will only work if pressure produces durable enforcement rather than another cycle of coercion, delay, and partial understandings. The deeper warning is that Trump is not negotiating with diplomats alone. He is negotiating with the hardline security core of the regime.

Solving the Persian puzzle is not just about Iran. It is also a test of whether Washington still knows how to deal with adversaries that use time, ambiguity, psychological leverage, and political warfare as negotiating tools. If the U.S. keeps misreading Tehran’s style of bargaining, it will be far less prepared for the much larger and more sophisticated challenge posed by Beijing, Xi, and the CCP.

Taarof and the Strategic Misread

The West keeps wanting a document when it should be studying the game. With Iran, the first ‘yes’ is often where the real negotiation begins. If you want to understand why so many Western officials keep misreading Iran at the negotiating table, start with one word: taarof.

At the cultural level, taarof is a Persian practice of politeness, indirection, staged modesty, and social positioning. Offers are not always meant to be accepted immediately. Refusals are not always final. The surface language matters, but the choreography underneath it often matters more.

Now, no serious person should reduce Iranian statecraft to etiquette. The Islamic Republic is not just “doing taarof” with centrifuges, sanctions, missiles, and maritime chokepoints. But Western negotiators get themselves into trouble when they treat Iranian diplomacy as linear, final, and transactional in the American sense.

Because in many Iranian settings, the first “yes” is not the end of the bargain. It is the opening of the real one.

That distinction matters enormously on the nuclear file.

In complex negotiations with Iranians, the true merits of the deal are often negotiated after apparent agreement is reached. Once they have the other side politically, psychologically, and diplomatically invested in “yes,” that is when the harder asks begin to emerge: sequencing demands, side understandings, interpretive flexibility, face-saving conditions, and the real desired outcomes.

The point is not just to reach agreement. The point is to make backing away harder than conceding more.

And that is where Americans are especially vulnerable.

We like clean endings, headline moments, frameworks, and de-escalation packages. We like to believe a signed document means the matter is settled. Tehran knows that. It studies it. It studies our election cycles, our market nerves, our media impatience, and our desire for easy answers to hard strategic problems.

The Bazaar Logic Behind Iranian Negotiation

“Wear down the negotiators. Wear down the press. Wear down markets. Wear down allied cohesion. Wear down the American public. Make every new round of talks sound like progress. Make every delay sound temporary. Let Western commentators start arguing that firmness is destabilizing while ambiguity is hopeful.”

With Iran, the first ‘yes’ is often where the real negotiation begins.

That is why the Iran file often looks less like sterile arms control and more like a bazaar transaction with uranium in the background.

In a bazaar, the first price is rarely the real price. The first acceptance is rarely the end of the story. The side that most clearly needs to close is the side that starts bleeding leverage. Endurance matters. Theater matters. Reading urgency matters.

Iran has brought that same logic into strategic negotiations for years: stretch engagement, create ambiguity, preserve optionality, test the other side’s will, and extract more from the party that needs closure faster.

That is what I mean by geopolitical taarof.

At the state level, geopolitical taarof is not about tea and courtesy. It is ceremonial openness, tactical ambiguity, selective accommodation, and real demands held in reserve until the counterpart is already invested in “success.” Once Washington or Europe is committed to the idea of a deal, Tehran moves to the deeper layers of the bargain: relief first, sequencing changes, enforcement flexibility, regional linkage, or preserving leverage elsewhere.

It is not just diplomacy. It is diplomacy fused with psychological positioning.

That also helps explain one of the oldest and most successful Iranian tactics in negotiating with the United States: draw out engagement long enough to turn diplomacy into a cognitive battle.

Wear down the negotiators. Wear down the press. Wear down markets. Wear down allied cohesion. Wear down the American public. Make every new round of talks sound like progress. Make every delay sound temporary. Let Western commentators start arguing that firmness is destabilizing while ambiguity is hopeful.

Tehran understands that time is not neutral. Time is pressure. Time is leverage. Time is often a weapon.

And Iran is especially good at weaponizing Western short-sightedness. It is a close student of election cycles, oil-price sensitivity, and the tendency in Washington to let artificial deadlines become pressure points. If the American side needs an answer before markets crack, before allies wobble, or before a domestic political window closes, then Tehran has already identified a vulnerability.

The JCPOA: Real Gains, Real Blind Spots

Iran does not just negotiate over uranium. It negotiates over time, leverage, optics, and Western impatience.

That was one of the hidden weaknesses of the JCPOA.

To be clear, the JCPOA was not imaginary, and it was not unserious. It imposed real technical limits on Iran’s program. Those were real gains, and pretending otherwise oversimplifies the record.

But its strengths sat beside clear shortcomings. The deal focused heavily on the nuclear file while leaving Iran’s missile program, proxy architecture, and wider regional coercion outside the core arrangement. It also reflected a broader Western tendency to confuse process with strategic transformation. The JCPOA constrained important parts of the program, but it did not change the regime’s worldview, coercive habits, or broader ambition structure.

That is the sharpest critique of the Obama-era framework. It was stronger on structured diplomacy and technical constraint, but weaker on the larger coercive ecosystem surrounding the deal.

Trump’s Red-Line Model

Red lines only matter if the other side believes they are real.

Trump’s current posture, by contrast, appears more rooted in explicit leverage, visible red lines, and the idea that Iran’s nuclear problem cannot be isolated from the rest of the threat picture. That is a real strength.

Red lines only matter if the other side believes they are real. One of the central failures of the Obama/Biden style, in the eyes of critics, was not simply that red lines existed on paper. It was that Tehran learned to question whether they would be enforced in practice. Once a regime decides your red lines are just opening bids for a later de-escalation package, deterrence starts to rot.

Trump’s advantage, at least conceptually, is that he seems to understand that Tehran must believe the line is real before any negotiated outcome has meaning. But his model carries risks too.

Clearer red lines are better than fuzzy ones, but maximal demands do not enforce themselves. Pressure can sharpen leverage, but it can also harden refusal if Washington slips from coercive diplomacy into perceived capitulation theater. If the terms become so maximal that Tehran believes it is being asked to publicly surrender rather than strategically bargain, the process can deadlock and drift back toward escalation.

That is not an argument against pressure. It is an argument for understanding the difference between leverage and performative absolutism.

There is also a narrower point worth making about negotiation style. I would be careful not to overstate it, but there is a limited overlap between certain elements of taarof and parts of Trump’s Art of the Deal persona. They are not the same thing. Trump’s style is overt, public, blunt, and pressure-heavy. Taarof is layered, indirect, coded, and tied to status and face.

But both understand that bargaining is not just about substance. It is also about theater, expectation-setting, signaling, and shaping the other side’s political and emotional position before the real bargain is locked.

Who Is Trump Actually Negotiating With?

Still, the deepest cautionary point is not style. It is who Trump is actually negotiating with.

Washington may still be tempted to think it is dealing mainly with the familiar clerical face of the Islamic Republic, or with diplomatic figures like Araghchi. That is increasingly outdated. The regime under stress looks less like a conventional clerical order and more like a hardened security state with clerical branding still attached.

That is why figures like Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr matter.

The Man Who Represents Post-Clerical Iran (Foreign Policy)

Major General Qassem Soleimani: Former Commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force (United Against Nuclear Iran)

Who Is Mohammed-Baqer Qalibaf, Trump’s Reported Top Pick to Lead Iran? (Time Magazine). *** For the record not one I would recommend ***

Iran’s Araghchi seen as country’s most powerful foreign minister yet - explainer (Jerusalem Post)

Think of Zolghadr less as another Soleimani and more as a praetorian state manager. Soleimani was the hitter, the action officer, the public face of expeditionary power. Zolghadr represents something different: the kind of operator who helps run the IRGC deep-state apparatus inside the bureaucracy, linking coercion, internal repression, institutional control, and hardline continuity.

That distinction matters because when people say the true hardliners are in charge of Iran, too many in the West still picture only bearded clerics in Qom. That is outdated. The harder truth is that the Islamic Republic depends on an interlocking class of revolutionary-security operators who do not always fit the Western caricature of clerical rule, but are every bit as ideological and often far more operationally consequential.

And there is a cautionary lesson here from the Khatami era.

When Khatami was trying, in relative terms, to push a somewhat more outward-looking posture, the Bush administration’s “Axis of Evil” framing helped hand Iran’s true hardliners a strategic gift. That does not mean Bush was wrong about the nature of the regime. He was right to see it as dangerous. But timing and sequencing matter in power struggles inside adversarial states. A clumsy external move can help settle internal fights in favor of the worst actors.

That matters now because pre-war, the visible name on the negotiation stage was Araghchi. But when Qalibaf is inserted more centrally and Zolghadr’s name rises inside the security structure, that tells you something much more important than the choreography of talks. It tells you who is actually controlling Iran.

It is not just the clerics in Qom. It is not just Mojtaba. It is not just the diplomatic clans.

It is the Khomeinist true believers embedded across Iran’s clerical-military-security-industrial complex: the networks that tie together the IRGC, the coercive bureaucracy, the judiciary, the nuclear file, the energy power structure, and the regime’s system-preservation machinery.

That is the camp Washington is really bargaining with.

The Real Negotiation

Which brings us back to taarof. Trump is not negotiating with a normal state looking for a clean transactional settlement. He is negotiating with a revolutionary security order that uses diplomacy as one instrument among many—alongside coercion, delay, brinkmanship, Hormuz leverage, and ideological consolidation.

That means every artificial deadline matters. Every media cycle matters. Every market wobble matters. Every American desire for an easy answer matters.

And it means the real test is not whether Tehran says yes to talks, yes to a framework, or even yes to a deal.

The real test is whether Washington understands that with Iran, the first yes is often when the real negotiation begins.

That is how a bazaar works. You do not judge the transaction by the smile, the tea, the first offer, or even the handshake. You judge it by who still holds leverage after the apparent agreement is reached.

Tehran has spent decades applying that logic at geopolitical scale. The West keeps wanting a document when it should be studying the game.

And this game is bigger than the nuclear file alone.

It sits inside a broader contest over maritime chokepoints, sanctions power, regional order, energy security, alliance credibility, and great-power signaling. It is fair to see the Ukraine war, the Iran conflict, pressure on Maduro, and pressure on Cuba as interconnected stress points in a wider struggle over deterrence, coercion, and the credibility of American red lines in what increasingly looks like Cold War 2.0.

That does not mean there is one neat master table where every global flashpoint is being traded like poker chips. But it does mean these are not isolated files. They are connected tests of resolve, and Tehran understands that very well.

Solving the Persian Puzzle Before the China Challenge

There is one more reason this matters beyond Iran itself: solving the Persian puzzle is an essential step in understanding how to deal with Beijing, Xi, and the CCP.

That does not mean Iran and China are the same. They are not. They operate at different scales, with different histories, different power bases, and very different strategic toolkits. But there is a connective lesson here. If Washington cannot correctly read a mid-level revolutionary power that negotiates through ambiguity, pressure, delay, escalation management, and psychological leverage, then it is badly underprepared for a long-form strategic contest with a far more sophisticated, patient, and globally embedded rival in Beijing.

Iran is, in many ways, a stress test for whether the United States still knows how to deal with adversaries that think in terms of endurance, asymmetry, sequencing, and political warfare rather than clean Western-style bargaining. Tehran studies our short attention span, our election cycles, our market sensitivities, our internal divisions, and our desire to stabilize first and think later. Beijing does the same thing, just at a far larger scale and with far more instruments of power.

That is why this file should be viewed as more than a regional problem or a nuclear problem. It is also a classroom. It is a live test of whether the United States can recognize when the other side is using process as leverage, ambiguity as strategy, and time as a weapon. If Washington keeps mistaking negotiations for progress, signaling for deterrence, and frameworks for settlements, it will keep getting outplayed not only in Tehran, but eventually in much more consequential contests tied to Beijing.

Final Take

The lesson is simple, even if the diplomacy is not.

• Do not confuse Iranian engagement with Iranian concession.

• Do not confuse a framework with a settlement.

• Do not confuse a public yes with a strategic yes.

• Do not assume the smiling diplomat is the man holding the knife.

And above all, do not forget that Tehran negotiates not just over terms, but over time, optics, sequencing, domestic politics, and Western impatience.

It negotiates like a bazaar actor with a revolutionary state attached to it.

If Washington wants a durable outcome, it has to negotiate accordingly.

Otherwise, once again, America will think it has closed the deal just as Iran starts asking for the real price.

NOW THAT THE DEAL IS NEAR, THE REAL DEAL BEGINS

And once we are past this phase, realize this is parter of a greater geopolitical piece that include Xi and the Chinese Communist Party

The breakdown in Iran-U.S. negotiations was not some diplomatic shock. It was the predictable result of two sides that entered talks with irreconcilable goals, incompatible definitions of peace, and radically different views of leverage. The “truce” bought time. It did not solve anything. And that is exactly how the Iranian regime likes it.

Peace at any cost usually means asking somebody else to pay the cost.

BIAS ALERT: As noted in all my prior posts, as an Iranian born American whose family fled and left everything behind to come to America post 1979 revolution, I have resented the Iranian regime. I have long felt regime change was central to the Persian Puzzle, and that regime must come from within.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: The Pakistan talks were never a real path to peace. They were a familiar Iranian regime tactic: use a “truce” to buy time, preserve leverage, and wait for the West to get distracted, all while holding onto the tools of coercion that matter most. The deeper problem is that this regime does not think like a normal state seeking coexistence, which is why any durable peace will require change from within Iran, not another round of wishful diplomacy.

While much of the world is focused on preventing a nuclear-armed Iran from imposing its will on the region, the regime clearly understands it can create a similar effect by choking off the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the broader desire for peace, it is hard to imagine Iran’s neighbors trusting this regime with that kind of power, whether through a nuclear umbrella or the ability to hold global trade hostage through naval coercion. Though the recent peace effort was welcomed, it was never likely to hold. Further escalation looks increasingly inevitable.

Keep in mind the conflict that is coming will not be purely kinetic, but involve every facet of irregular warfare, to include unconventional warfare, as well as economic and cognitive warfare. While the term “regime change” will again be thrown around, regime change MUST come from within, and the Iranian people need to take firm ownership of what their future will hold. CAUTION - though everyone wants regime change, the change we get may not be the ideal one we want, but most anything should be better than what we have - Inshallah!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The collapse of the Pakistan talks should surprise no one. The prior framework already showed the two sides were nowhere close: Washington wanted a real rollback of Iran’s nuclear threat, wider constraints on missiles and proxies, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran wanted guarantees against future strikes, sanctions relief, reparations, leverage over Hormuz, and regional concessions that would preserve its ability to posture as the indispensable power in the Gulf. After 21 hours of talks, the two sides left without a deal, with U.S. officials saying Iran refused to commit to forgo a nuclear weapon and Iran saying the Americans were making excessive demands. That is not a near miss. That is a structural impasse.

More importantly, this “truce” fits a pattern the Iranian regime has used for decades: negotiate, buy time, stall, preserve core leverage, and keep advancing its agenda while the West gets distracted by election cycles, quarterly earnings, domestic political churn, and the next media panic. The Islamic Republic does not see the world the way normal states do. It does not approach power, pain, or compromise in the same way.

This is a regime with a martyr’s mindset. When an individual embraces death to advance an ideological cause, we call that terrorism. When a regime embraces the same logic, while seeking nuclear leverage and threatening global commerce, it becomes an existential threat. That is why the central problem is not simply diplomacy gone wrong. It is that the West keeps pretending this is a conventional negotiating partner when it plainly is not. A durable peace will not come from flattering that reality away. It will only come when the regime loses its ability to terrorize the region and, ultimately, when change comes from within Iran itself.

There are those close to the levers of power in Iran that likely do not want to go down with the Iranian sinking ship. By many estimates more than 80% of the Iranian people want the entirety of the regime gone. Of the 20% that benefit from the regime, likely no more than 10% truly believe in the ideology, while the rest simply profit from the regime. Until recently the 10% hardline minority had absolute power and no challengers, not from the 80% who resented them or the 10% that profited from the regime. Operation Epic Fury has eroded the regime hardliner hold on Iran, though the grip is still there. The question is how weak has the regime become and how weak will it become. If there is change it must come from within, the question is what regime will we end-up coming to power.

SHORT LIVED TRUCE

The Pakistan Talks Were Always a Long Shot - There is a bad habit in Western commentary to treat every round of talks as though diplomacy itself is evidence of convergence. It is not. Sometimes talks are a sign that the parties are close. Sometimes talks are just a sign that both sides want to regroup, test the other, shape public perception, and avoid blame for what comes next. Islamabad looked much more like the second category. The negotiations were billed as historic, but the substance never matched the hype. The U.S. wanted a verifiable end to Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions and relief from the economic blackmail tied to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran wanted a very different package: security guarantees, compensation, sanctions relief, and recognition of its leverage. When the parties define “peace” that differently, failure is not an accident. It is the baseline outcome.

That is why the breakdown should have been obvious as soon as the earlier proposal began circulating. Even before the Pakistan talks formally collapsed, the framework already made clear that the gap was enormous. The regime was not preparing to surrender its principal coercive tools under pressure. Washington was not going to call it peace if Tehran preserved a plausible path to nuclear breakout and kept the world’s energy markets under threat. Too many observers confused the existence of talks with the existence of deal space. There was very little of the latter. The notion that Iran and the U.S. were somehow about to meet in the middle was wishful thinking dressed up as analysis.

What This War Was Actually About

It is worth resetting the frame, because a lot of soft-headed analysis has already started sanding down the original purpose of the conflict. This war did not begin because Washington, Jerusalem, and several Arab capitals woke up one day craving instability. It began because a nuclear-focused Iranian regime, already armed with proxies, missile programs, terror networks, and ideological ambitions, was viewed as unacceptable by the states that would have to live under its shadow. The initial aim was to degrade and decapitate the regime’s ability to force hegemony on the region and to halt its march toward nuclear weapons capability. That objective was not limited to Israel or the United States. Iran’s Arab neighbors had no interest in watching the Islamic Republic gain a shield behind which it could expand aggression and intimidation.

That basic logic has not changed. What has changed is the mechanism through which the regime is trying to recover leverage. Since the nuclear file is under pressure, Tehran has leaned into another form of coercion: Hormuz. If it cannot immediately impose its will through nuclear deterrence, it can try to impose it through economic strangulation. AP and Reuters both describe the Strait of Hormuz as central to the current deadlock, and AP notes that roughly 20% of global oil shipments normally move through the strait. Iran’s posture there is not some side dispute. It is the regime trying to prove it can still hold the region, and the wider global economy, hostage.

• 20% PERCENT - The Strait of Hormuz is a critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

• 30% PERCENT - The tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have led to a 30% increase in global oil prices.

Hormuz Is the Regime’s Substitute Weapon

This is one of the most important strategic points in the entire crisis. Too many people still talk as if the core issue is only centrifuges, enrichment levels, or inspection formulas. Those matter. But the regime is also showing it can generate many of the same coercive effects a nuclear umbrella might provide by throttling the flow of trade and energy. That is not a secondary problem. It is the problem. Iran is signaling that even if its path to a bomb is slowed, it can still make the world pay a steep price for resisting its regional ambitions.

That is why the reflexive European and dovish Western call for “peace at any cost” misses the point. Of course peace is preferable. Of course conflict should be avoided whenever possible. But what exactly are they asking the region to accept in the name of peace? A regime that still seeks ideological dominance, still relies on coercion, still refuses meaningful concessions, and now wants the right to squeeze the global economy through one of the world’s most important chokepoints? That is not peace. That is blackmail with better branding. Tehran’s effort to preserve leverage over Hormuz as part of a lasting arrangement tells you everything you need to know about how it sees negotiations: not as a path to coexistence, but as another theater for extracting advantage.

Iran has turned control of the Strait of Hormuz into one of its most effective sources of economic, military, and diplomatic leverage, using restricted access, transit tolls, and IRGC-managed passage as pressure points in the stalled Islamabad talks with the United States. The strategy reflects a deliberate attempt to negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness, while signaling that the regime sees the strait not merely as a temporary wartime tool, but as a longer-term instrument of coercion, deterrence, and even legal normalization. At the same time, this approach is fueling international legal controversy under UNCLOS, increasing maritime risk, and tying any broader de-escalation directly to whether safe commercial transit through the waterway can be restored.

The Regime’s Worldview Is the Real Obstacle

The hardest truth here is also the one many Western policy circles most want to avoid: the Islamic Republic does not think like a normal status quo power. It does not treat compromise the way normal governments do. It does not interpret restraint the way normal states do. It is animated by a worldview that is revolutionary, theological, grievance-driven, and saturated with martyrdom culture. That matters because strategy is downstream of worldview. If a regime genuinely believes history, faith, sacrifice, and violence entitle it to dominate its surroundings, then standard Western assumptions about bargaining only go so far.

This is where the cliché about “misunderstanding Iran” becomes dangerous. The problem is not that the world has failed to understand the regime’s psychology. The problem is that too many still refuse to take it seriously. A regime with a martyr’s mindset is not merely stubborn. It is structurally more willing to absorb pain, prolong suffering, and turn destruction into political theater. When an individual behaves that way, we call them a suicide terrorist. When a regime behaves that way, while seeking nuclear leverage and threatening global commerce, it is an existential threat. The negotiation problem is therefore not just technical. It is civilizational and strategic. Can such a regime be sanely negotiated with in the long run? Maybe tactically, at moments, for pauses and transactions. But as a durable partner in regional peace? That remains close to fantasy.

Why the Breakdown Points Toward Renewed Conflict

The simplest reason the conflict is likely to resume is that none of the core drivers of war have actually been resolved. The U.S. has not accepted an Iran that preserves nuclear ambiguity and retains coercive control over Hormuz. Iran has not accepted a settlement that strips away its leverage, constrains its regional model, and leaves it strategically humiliated. That means the ceasefire is not a bridge to peace. It is a pause between rounds. AP described the truce as fragile and noted uncertainty over what comes after the current ceasefire period expires. Reuters then reported Trump’s immediate move toward a blockade posture in Hormuz after the talks failed. Those are not indicators of a durable settlement. Those are indicators of a confrontation still looking for its next trigger.

There is also the wider regional problem. Even while the Iran-U.S. channel was active, the ceasefire architecture was contested, especially around Lebanon. AP reported continued Israeli strikes there and continued disagreement over whether the truce logic applied beyond the immediate U.S.-Iran track. That kind of ambiguity is not some technical glitch. It is exactly how fragile truces unravel. One side claims the ceasefire is narrow, the other claims it is broader, and soon enough everyone is back to using force while insisting the other side broke the peace first.

Then there is the economic dimension. Gulf markets, oil, shipping, and energy flows remain vulnerable to every rhetorical spike and every military signal. Reuters reported renewed market anxiety after the Islamabad failure and highlighted the damage already done by disruption in the Gulf. Once a regime demonstrates it is willing to weaponize a chokepoint at global scale, the costs of “waiting and seeing” grow fast. The world may want this conflict frozen. Tehran seems to want it instrumentally managed. Those are very different things.

Peace Is Welcome. Submission Is Not.

One of the laziest caricatures in this entire debate is the idea that the Trump administration, Israel, or Iran’s Arab neighbors prefer war to a deal. They do not. They would welcome a deal that actually neutralizes the threat, opens the waterways, reins in the proxies, and blocks a sprint to the bomb. The issue is not whether peace is desirable. The issue is whether the current Iranian regime is capable of a peace compatible with the regional order its neighbors are willing to live under. The evidence so far says no. The regime’s hegemonic conception of itself runs directly against the kind of Middle East the Gulf states, Israel, and even many ordinary Iranians want to see emerge.

This is why so many calls for immediate accommodation ring hollow. Peace at any cost usually means asking somebody else to pay the cost. In this case, that “somebody else” is the region itself: the Gulf, Israel, Lebanon, global shipping lanes, and ultimately ordinary Iranians who remain trapped under a regime that turns every pause into preparation. The truce camp wants quiet. The regime wants time. Those are not the same thing.

Regime Change Is Not the War Aim. It Is Still the Only Real Path to Peace.

This part makes polite analysts uncomfortable, but it needs to be said clearly. No, this conflict should not be sold as a foreign regime-change project. That would be reckless and strategically self-defeating. Outsiders cannot build legitimacy inside Iran. Foreign armies cannot manufacture a stable post-regime order from the outside. The region has seen enough of that fantasy. But it is also getting harder to deny the underlying reality: as long as this regime, in its current ideological form, remains in power, durable peace will remain out of reach. That is not because outsiders are obsessed with toppling Tehran. It is because the regime’s governing logic itself is destabilizing.

So the honest formulation is this: the current war is not about regime change, but real peace probably is. The only legitimate path is change from within. It has to come from the Iranian people, not from abroad. The outside world can weaken the regime, constrain its coercive tools, and deny it the means to dominate the region. But only Iranians can decide to end the system that has held them and their neighbors hostage for decades. That is the difference between fantasy and strategy.

Iran Has Been Winning the Cognitive Warfare Fight

One of the more uncomfortable truths in this conflict is that Iran has often outperformed the West in the cognitive warfare domain, even while taking punishment militarily. Tehran understands that modern conflict is not just about missiles, proxies, and chokepoints. It is also about narrative capture, emotional manipulation, and shaping how outside audiences interpret events in real time. Recent AP reporting found that pro-Iran groups have used AI-generated English-language memes, satire, and social-media content to influence Western audiences and frame the war on terms favorable to Tehran, while Reuters has separately reported that the Trump administration has struggled to control the public narrative even amid tactical military gains.

That matters because the regime does not need to “win” conventionally if it can muddy the information environment, fracture Western opinion, and turn every truce, civilian casualty story, or escalation cycle into a propaganda opportunity. Too often, large parts of Western media and pundit circles do the regime’s work for it by reflexively amplifying Tehran-friendly framing without seriously interrogating the source, the motive, or who benefits.

That does not mean every criticism of U.S. or Israeli policy is wrong. It does mean Iran has become highly skilled at injecting its preferred narratives into an ecosystem already primed by anti-Trump reflexes, anti-Israel sentiment, and a broader appetite for simplistic morality plays over hard strategic analysis. AP also reported that China’s state media has used AI and social platforms to push war narratives that cast the U.S. as the aggressor and normalize Iran’s victim posture, reinforcing the broader information battlespace Tehran is operating in.

The practical takeaway is simple: this war will not be decided by kinetic force alone. If the West wants to win strategically, it has to stop treating information warfare as a side show and start treating it as a central front. That means exposing regime propaganda faster, challenging lazy narrative laundering in media and policy circles, and recognizing that Tehran’s long game is to outlast its adversaries by weakening their will, not necessarily by defeating them outright on the battlefield. Reuters has also reported growing Russian-Iranian cyber and intelligence cooperation during the war, underscoring that Tehran’s irregular warfare toolkit now spans not just shipping disruption and proxy violence, but cyber operations and narrative shaping as well.

Iran does not need Western pundits to become formal agents of the regime. It only needs them to keep acting as useful amplifiers of the regime’s framing long enough to sap the West’s will to finish the fight.

The Pakistan talks did not fail because diplomacy was not given enough of a chance. They failed because the Islamic Republic still believes time is on its side, pain is survivable, the West is distractible, and every truce is an opportunity to regroup. That has been the regime’s playbook for years. Stall. Negotiate. Reframe. Survive. Advance. Repeat.

Conflict should be avoided whenever possible. Any serious person should start there. But there are moments when avoiding conflict at all costs becomes its own form of delusion. Sometimes the problem is not bad messaging, mutual misunderstanding, or insufficient empathy. Sometimes the problem is a regime that sees martyrdom as virtue, coercion as statecraft, and compromise as weakness. In those moments, the question is no longer whether peace is desirable. It is whether peace with that regime, on those terms, is even real. Right now, the answer looks increasingly obvious. The “truce” was not the beginning of the end. It was the pause before the next round.

This conflict may be kinetic on the surface, but winning it will depend just as much on irregular warfare. That means squeezing the regime at its real leverage points, including economic pressure on strategic nodes like Kharg Island, while also finally taking the cognitive fight seriously. Tehran has long understood that wars are not won by missiles alone. They are won by shaping perception, buying time, muddying facts, and feeding narratives into a Western media and political ecosystem that is often all too eager to parrot anti-Israel, anti-Trump, and regime-adjacent talking points without asking who benefits. Iran does not need to win conventionally if it can sap Western will, fracture public opinion, and turn every pause into a propaganda victory. That is why the next phase of this fight will not just be about ships, missiles, and chokepoints. It will be about breaking the regime’s economic leverage, exposing its information warfare for what it is, and refusing to let cognitive capture in the West hand Tehran the strategic win it cannot secure on the battlefield. Kharg Island remains central because it handles about 90% of Iran’s oil exports, and AP and Reuters have both reported that Iran-linked influence operations have actively tried to shape Western narratives around the war.

BIAS ALERT: Per my prior writings, I detest the Iranian regime and have long been critical of any policy on Iran (from the right or left) that involved containment, management or appeasement. Regime change should have been the focus from the start. However regime change should not be the West’s mandate. Our focuse should be to erode Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and weaken the regime to allow for the revolt to come from within.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: Iran’s military architecture was not built for elegance. It was built for survival under bombardment, decapitation strikes, internal unrest, and prolonged psychological pressure. The regime has long prepared for the kind of campaign it is now facing, relying on the IRGC, Basij, proxy networks, and hardened missile and drone infrastructure to absorb punishment, keep fighting, and convince the United States and its partners that the cost of staying in the fight is too high. But beneath that system sits a core vulnerability: the Artesh and regular security apparatus are not as ideologically hardened as the IRGC-Basij complex, and the regime likely fears internal fracture inside these conventional ranks more than it fears another round of airstrikes. The Iranian regime is not trying to win the war, it wants to defeat the West’s resolve, ware it down, and rely on a devisive U.S. political landscape to force an end before “the next election”.

• Regime change must come from within, the U.S. and Israel are simply weakening the regime’s ability to supress it

• This is a fight the regime has prepared to not win, but to out last

• The regime fears an inflection point where the masses and the financial elite who benefit from the regime rise-up.

• When that will happen is anyone’s guess. It certainly will not within President Trump’s dates, and the timelines the media and anti-Trump/anti-Israel crowd is focused on.

For the Iranian regime to win, they need to strike at the Iranian/Persian pride DNA and nationalistic fervor. The regime is trying to do this by framing it as a “us vs. them” mindset. To question a sitting President, critique them, and demand accountability is a VERY AMERICAN thing to do, and should be encouraged!

However there is a balance between accountability in an open society and mob rule. For now people clamoring for every military decision to be run by the public are no different than a drunken fan in a stadium questioning every call of a play, in a sport they are not fit to play in, and in fact have never played the sport to begin with.

To be critcal is a VERY AMERICAN obligation. But we need to make sure we are not listening and following the regime’s cognitive warfare script.

SEE ENDING FOR RECOMMENDED READINGS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Three themes define how to understand Iran’s Mosaic Defense Doctrine and the current conflict.

First, “True Believers”: The Islamic Republic has spent decades preparing for this exact day. Mosaic Defense is not just a battlefield concept. It is a regime survival doctrine designed to preserve coercive power after leadership losses, missile strikes, communications breakdowns, and domestic unrest. Tehran’s bet has always been that the IRGC, Basij, Iraqi Shi’a militia, and the broader proxy ecosystem could absorb pain, stretch the fight, and wage a parallel information campaign that pressures Washington and the West to lose political will before the regime loses physical control.

Second, “Regular Forces”: the regime’s deepest fear may not be external attack alone. It may be internal unreliability. The Artesh and other regular security elements are not as monolithic, ideological, or regime-fused as the IRGC and Basij. They are more conventional, more institutional, and historically more separated from the revolutionary core. That distinction matters. If Iran faces real internal fracture, mass unrest, or widespread battlefield exhaustion, the regime is likely far more worried about wavering inside the regular military and security system than inside the IRGC’s hardened political-security machine.

Third, “Follow the Money”: Behind the Iranian regime’s military industrial complex are a series of very wealth families who not only control and profit off of the military, but the vast parts of the economy the IRGC controls. While many parts of the kleptocracy and oligopoly are born of Khomeini’s revolution, many care more about power, wealth and self preseration than they do about the ideaology. Once they realize the hardline zealot ideology of the regime is dying, their focus on self and wealth preservation can be the trigger to collapse the regime from within.

The War the Regime Spent Decades Preparing to Fight

Iran’s military system was never designed to look neat on an org chart. It was designed to survive regime-threatening war, absorb leadership losses, and keep functioning even after precision strikes, assassinations, communications breakdowns, and internal unrest. That is the essence of Iran’s so-called Mosaic Defense Doctrine: decentralize force, distribute coercive power, harden missile infrastructure, and ensure that the loss of any single node does not collapse the system.

That is also why outside observers often misunderstand the Iranian armed forces. Iran does not function like a normal state with one military hierarchy and one center of gravity. It operates through a dual military structure: the Artesh, Iran’s conventional armed forces, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, the ideological-security arm of the regime. The Artesh is the traditional army, navy, and air force. The IRGC is the regime’s praetorian guard, strategic strike force, political enforcer, and internal survival mechanism. In any real crisis, the IRGC matters more because it sits closer to power, escalation control, missile forces, internal repression, and regime continuity.

War Without a Single Point of Failure

Mosaic Defense is best understood as Iran’s answer to one central fear: decapitation. Tehran spent decades studying how centralized Arab military systems were dismantled from the air and from within. The lesson it took was simple. If your command system is centralized, your war can be crippled quickly. If your forces are fragmented into semi-autonomous regional commands with pre-delegated authorities, hardened infrastructure, dispersed stockpiles, and layered security forces, then bombing the center no longer guarantees paralysis.

This is not just military theory. It is the regime’s survival blueprint. Iran’s defense architecture fuses conventional defense, strategic missile deterrence, proxy warfare, internal repression, and psychological endurance into one system. It is designed to make any campaign against the regime slower, bloodier, less predictable, and more politically exhausting than outside planners would prefer.

The goal is not necessarily to win cleanly in a conventional sense. The goal is to outlast, impose friction, and erode political will. Iran wants adversaries to conclude that the cost of staying in the fight exceeds the value of finishing it.

That is where cognitive warfare enters the picture. Tehran’s strategy has long rested not just on missiles, militias, and hardened tunnels, but on narrative manipulation. It seeks to shape international opinion, amplify calls for restraint, exploit divisions inside Western politics, and create enough ambiguity and discomfort that outside powers start looking for an exit before the regime’s coercive core truly breaks. In that sense, Mosaic Defense is part battlefield doctrine and part political warfare doctrine.

Artesh vs. IRGC: Two Militaries, Two Loyalties

The Artesh is the older institution and the more conventional one. Its role is territorial defense, sustained ground warfare, border protection, and the traditional sovereign functions of a national military. It is larger in manpower, built around endurance, artillery, armor, and defensive operations. It is not the regime’s preferred instrument for ideological control or strategic escalation.

The IRGC, by contrast, is the Islamic Republic’s chosen instrument for the wars that matter most to the regime. It controls the missile portfolio, dominates escalation logic, manages proxy relationships, and sits at the center of the state’s political-security architecture. The IRGC is not merely a military formation. It is a regime preservation institution with military capabilities.

That distinction is critical. The Artesh exists to defend Iran as a country. The IRGC exists to defend the Islamic Republic as a system. Those are not always identical missions.

This also explains why the IRGC is far more deeply embedded in politics, economics, intelligence, internal security, and the ideological machinery of the state. The regime trusts the Artesh to fight. It trusts the IRGC to preserve power, suppress unrest, project influence through proxies, and continue the fight when a conventional military might show hesitation.

And that brings us to one of the most important underappreciated dynamics in the current conflict: the regime likely does not see these institutions as equally reliable under maximum stress.

The Regime’s Real Fear: Internal Fracture in the Regular Forces

The IRGC and Basij are politically filtered, ideologically conditioned, and deeply fused to regime survival. The Artesh is different. It is more institutional than revolutionary, more professional than ideological, and more connected to the idea of state service than to clerical rule.

That does not mean the Artesh is anti-regime. It means it is not the same kind of instrument. It has historically been kept at arm’s length, intentionally constrained, and denied the same central political role as the IRGC for a reason. The regime has never fully trusted a conventional military it did not wholly build in its own image.

That is why, in a moment of real regime stress, the question is not only how much missile capacity Iran retains or how many militia members it can mobilize. The deeper question is whether all parts of the Iranian security system remain equally willing to fire on fellow Iranians, suppress dissent indefinitely, and absorb heavy pressure for the sake of the regime’s survival.

The Islamic Republic’s greatest strategic fear may be that the conventional shell of the state becomes less dependable as the coercive core is forced to lean harder on the IRGC, Basij, and imported militia networks. If cracks open inside the Artesh or regular security ranks, then the regime’s long-prepared external defense model suddenly faces an internal political crisis it cannot bomb its way out of.

Why the Basij Matters More Than Outsiders Think

No serious look at Iranian defense can ignore the Basij. It is often casually described as a militia, but that undersells its function. The Basij is a mass mobilization, surveillance, coercion, and internal enforcement network nested under the IRGC. In wartime, it can support rear-area security, manpower augmentation, local defense, and regime protection. In peacetime and crisis, it is central to intimidation, neighborhood surveillance, crowd control, and repression.

This is one of the reasons Iran’s defense architecture is more resilient than many outsiders assume. A state can lose commanders, bases, or equipment and still function if it retains local coercive capacity. The Basij gives the regime that depth. It is not elite. It is not polished. But it is useful where it matters most: the street, the town, the checkpoint, the university, the workplace, the protest site.

In a decapitation scenario, the regime still needs eyes on the street and bodies to control the population. It needs forces that can be surged faster than conventional units can be mobilized. The Basij was built for exactly that.

And that is why it sits at the center of the regime’s survival calculus. If the regular military is not fully trusted in a moment of internal upheaval, then the Basij becomes even more essential as the connective tissue between the IRGC and daily coercive control.

The Iraqi Shi’a Militia Question

(This above video is from Epoch Times, showing what claims to be Shi’a militia convoy from Iraq, heading to Iran)

Recent reporting that Iran has sought to import Shi’a militia manpower from Iraq is especially telling. If accurate, it suggests the regime is looking beyond its own domestic security apparatus for reinforcement, redundancy, and political reliability.

That would be revealing for several reasons. First, it would suggest Tehran does not fully trust domestic capacity alone to manage internal unrest under wartime conditions. Second, it would fit the regime’s long-standing practice of using ideologically aligned foreign Shi’a formations as instruments of hard power. Third, it would create a buffer between the regime and the political cost of relying exclusively on native forces to carry out brutal internal enforcement.

This is classic IRGC thinking. Layer the coercive structure. Build redundancy. Use foreign auxiliaries if needed. Bring in actors who may be more willing to use force against local populations and less constrained by local sentiment or social ties.

In practical terms, imported militia manpower serves several functions at once. It supplements overstretched internal forces. It introduces more ideologically reliable enforcers into sensitive areas. And it signals that the regime is preparing not just for battlefield attrition, but for domestic stress and regime continuity under fire.

That should not be dismissed as a side note. It is a flashing indicator that Tehran is thinking beyond external defense and toward internal survivability.

Missile and Drone Cities: The Concrete Expression of Mosaic Defense

If Mosaic Defense is the theory, Iran’s reported missile and drone cities are its physical manifestation. These underground facilities are not merely storage depots. They are survivability infrastructure.

Their purpose is straightforward: preserve retaliatory capability after first-wave strikes, complicate targeting, shield launch assets, and ensure Iran can continue firing even after visible surface infrastructure is degraded. The logic is brutally simple. If leadership compounds are vulnerable, bury the missile force. If centralized command is vulnerable, disperse and pre-delegate. If surface launchers are vulnerable, push deeper underground. If the enemy relies on precision airpower, force that enemy into a long and expensive hunt through tunnels, mountains, hardened complexes, and distributed launch networks.

That is why these missile and drone cities matter so much. They reflect a strategic assumption that Iran would one day face a campaign aimed at degrading strategic strike capacity quickly. Tehran’s answer was not to eliminate vulnerability. It was to make the vulnerability harder to exploit decisively.

This is also why any decapitation strategy against Iran is harder than simply striking leaders and command buildings. The regime has long assumed exactly that kind of attack. The infrastructure was built to ensure the system keeps functioning even after the opening blows land.

The Regime’s Strategic Bet

What Iran is facing now is, in many respects, the war it spent decades preparing to fight. The regime assumed that any serious campaign against it would begin with leadership targeting, strikes on strategic nodes, attacks on missile forces, and attempts to break communications, morale, and command continuity. Mosaic Defense was built to ensure the war would not end there.

It was built to preserve enough retaliatory capacity, enough local coercive power, and enough institutional redundancy to keep the conflict going long enough to shift the fight from the military domain into the political and psychological domain.

That is the regime’s real bet: not that it can outfight the United States conventionally, but that it can outlast the West politically. That through the IRGC, Basij, foreign Shi’a militia, proxies, missile survivability, and cognitive warfare, it can convince Washington and its allies that the campaign is too messy, too expensive, too escalatory, too politically fraught, and too uncertain to finish.

That is the doctrine in action.

But there is still a fault line running beneath it. The regime can harden tunnels. It can disperse missiles. It can import militia manpower. It can mobilize the Basij. What it cannot fully solve is the question of legitimacy and loyalty across the broader state apparatus if the pressure becomes too great. And that is where the Artesh and regular forces matter most.

The IRGC may be the regime’s sword and shield. The Basij may be its neighborhood enforcer. Foreign Shi’a militia may be its expendable auxiliary. But if the regular military and security establishment ever begins to waver, hesitate, or fracture under the weight of prolonged conflict and public rage, then the regime’s carefully layered defense suddenly looks less like a seamless mosaic and more like a structure held together by fear alone.

Final Thought

For years, many observers treated Iran’s dual-force structure as redundant or inefficient. It is neither. It is deliberate. The Islamic Republic built parallel institutions because it never trusted a single institution to survive a real war or a real uprising.

That is the point of Mosaic Defense. It is not simply about defeating foreign attack. It is about ensuring that no single strike, no single loss of leadership, no single breakdown in command, and no single eruption of unrest can unravel the regime all at once.

But the same structure that gives Iran resilience also reveals its deepest insecurity. The regime trusts the IRGC and Basij because it built them as ideological guardians. It has always been more cautious with the Artesh and regular forces because they are instruments of the state, not pure instruments of the revolution.

And that may be the real center of gravity in this fight. Iran has long prepared for American bombs. It is far less certain it can indefinitely survive the day its own conventional institutions stop fearing the regime more than they fear the future without it.

WINNING? No Other Option

Defeating the Iranian regime was never going to come down to one air campaign, one decapitation strike package, or one show of overwhelming force. That is the entire point of Mosaic Defense. The regime has spent decades preparing for this day, hardening its infrastructure, decentralizing coercive power, building redundancy through the IRGC, Basij, and proxy networks, and planning for how to survive even after taking a serious beating. That means there is no clean, simple military solution.

Force can weaken the regime, degrade its tools, and shatter its confidence, but force alone will not finish the job. To truly end this, the regime has to be broken from within. The real objective is to weaken the system enough that the Iranian people, and the less ideological parts of the state and security structure, can rise against it. Outside powers can create the conditions, provide pressure, and support undermatched anti-regime elements as needed, but this ultimately has to be Iran’s fight and Iran’s future to reclaim.

The regime knows this, which is exactly why it is working overtime not just on the battlefield, but in the cognitive and narrative war. Tehran understands that if it can break Western political will before its own internal control fractures, it still has a path to survival. That is why it pushes so hard through media manipulation, sympathetic analysts, useful idiots in think tank circles, and the broader anti-Trump, anti-Israel contingent that too often ends up parroting regime talking points under the banner of restraint, balance, or anti-war caution. Some of that effort may unfortunately be working.

The regime does not need to win outright in the conventional sense. It just needs to generate enough doubt, moral confusion, and political fatigue that the United States and its partners ease off before the real pressure point is reached inside Iran itself. That is the contest now: not just whether the regime can absorb military punishment, but whether the West has the clarity and stamina to stay in the fight long enough for the regime’s internal rot to become fatal.

BIAS ALERT: Per my prior writings, I am critical of prior U.S. policy on Iran that was falsely focused on containment and management, when from the beginning Iran regime change should have always been the focus. A regime that regularly demonstrates zero regard to killing its own people and exporting terrorism is abroad has demonstrated zero right to govern a country, let alone one charging towards becoming a nuclear state.

The following is my assessment and observations from open-source information on the Iran Nuclear Program generally based on research from the following website.

Operation Epic Fury and the Remnants of Iran’s Nuclear Program (CSIS)

Securing Iran’s enriched uranium by force would be risky and complex, experts say (AP News)

Trump May Seize Iran’s Nuclear Stockpile: Why Airstrikes Alone Aren’t Enough (CSIS)

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)

Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI.org)

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: Iran has already proven the hard part: it can enrich uranium at increasingly dangerous levels, preserve technical know-how, and rebuild around pressure. That means the real debate is no longer whether Tehran can become a nuclear weapons state, but how quickly it could choose to move from threshold capability to weapons-grade material—and who will control that capability if and when it does. The central failure of the Iran deal was not that it did nothing, but that it bought time without permanently dismantling the architecture of breakout, while leaving major loopholes around delivery systems, sunset clauses, and the broader coercive strategy of the regime. Iran’s nuclear file was never separable from its missile program, its regional warfare model, or the ideological nature of the state itself.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For more than two decades, Iran has run the same broad play: conceal capabilities, advance where possible, negotiate when pressured, pocket concessions, and preserve the core elements of the program for another day. The exposure of Natanz and Arak in 2002 destroyed the idea that Tehran’s nuclear effort was fully transparent or purely civilian. Since then, the issue has not been whether Iran has scientific talent or industrial ambition. It has been whether anyone still believes a state enriching to 60% is simply pursuing peaceful energy. The IAEA has repeatedly underscored that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state under the NPT producing uranium enriched to that level, which is uncomfortably close to weapons-grade and far beyond what a normal civilian power program requires.

The JCPOA imposed real but temporary constraints. It capped enrichment, limited stockpiles, and curbed certain facilities for a period of years. But its weaknesses were always obvious to critics: sunset clauses, preserved enrichment infrastructure, incomplete treatment of missile delivery systems, and a political framework that let Iran maintain the essence of a threshold capability while enjoying sanctions relief and international legitimization. That is why so many critics argued the deal was less about ending the program than about managing and deferring it.

That critique looks even sharper when viewed alongside the North Korea precedent. Pyongyang used diplomacy, freezes, ambiguity, and drawn-out verification fights to buy time until it eventually crossed the finish line. Iran is not North Korea in every way, but the pattern is close enough to be a warning: if you leave the machinery, the expertise, and the pathway intact, you are not eliminating the threat. You are managing the calendar.

Outside efforts to stop Iran’s program—Stuxnet, sabotage, assassinations, and military strikes like Operation Midnight Hammer—have all reinforced the same hard truth: they can slow the program, damage sites, kill key personnel, and complicate reconstitution, but they do not erase the underlying technical knowledge. Once a regime demonstrates it can enrich at scale and preserve that expertise, the strategic problem changes. It becomes less about preventing know-how and more about controlling the political context in which that know-how exists.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS - 101

3 Parts Needed for a Nuclear Weapon, Iran Has 1, on their Way to the 2nd - A nuclear weapons program really comes down to three core ingredients. First, you need the fissile material—usually highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium—because without that, there is no bomb. Second, you need the weaponization capability: the scientists, engineers, and technical infrastructure to turn that material into an actual working device. That means designing the weapon, figuring out the triggering mechanism, managing explosives, and in many cases shrinking it down into something that can be delivered reliably.

Third, you need a delivery system. It is one thing to build a device in theory; it is another thing entirely to field a usable weapon. That usually means missiles, aircraft, or some other credible means of getting it to a target. Put simply, fissile material gives you the core, weaponization gives you the bomb, and delivery gives you the strategic threat. Without all three, you do not really have a full nuclear weapons program—you just have pieces of one.

CIVILIAN USE & PROGRAM CREDIBILITY

Iran’s defenders and useful optimists spent years hiding behind the language of sovereign rights and peaceful nuclear development. That line may have bought some room when the argument centered around low-level enrichment and notional civilian uses. It collapses under the weight of 60% enrichment.

A real civilian nuclear energy program does not need to stockpile uranium enriched to 60%. That is the point where the “peaceful program” rationale stops sounding like policy analysis and starts sounding like an excuse. Tehran long tried to justify 20% enrichment through reference to the Tehran Research Reactor and isotope production. Even that was controversial. But 60% is a different category entirely. It is not normal civilian behavior. It is threshold behavior. It is the kind of level that tells you a regime wants to sit one political decision away from something much more dangerous.

And that is really the point people should stop dancing around: if Iran only wanted peaceful nuclear capability, why keep pushing higher? Why keep accumulating material at levels that dramatically shorten breakout timelines? Why preserve a program structure that only makes strategic sense if the regime values coercive leverage, weapons optionality, or both? At some point, pretending not to know the answer becomes its own form of willful blindness.

IRAN NUKE DEAL - JCPOA

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - A Deal That Bought Time, Not Resolution - The Iran nuclear deal was sold as a major nonproliferation achievement, and to be fair, it did impose real restraints for a time. It capped enrichment levels, reduced stockpiles, and limited parts of the declared program. Supporters argued that any deal that slowed Iran and expanded inspection access was better than no deal at all.

That is the best case for the agreement. The problem is that it never answered the harder question: what happens when the clock runs out and the core infrastructure remains? The JCPOA did not permanently dismantle Iran’s enrichment base. It did not erase the scientific expertise. It did not eliminate the regime’s ability to preserve industrial memory and resume activity later from a stronger technical position. In other words, it did not solve the fundamental problem. It regulated it for a period of time.

That distinction matters because arms control can either terminate a threat, freeze a threat, or defer a threat. The JCPOA was always much closer to the second and third categories than the first. Its defenders often acted as though delay itself was strategic success. Delay can matter, but only if it is used to produce a more durable end state. In Iran’s case, delay increasingly looks like a bridge to reconstitution.

IRAN BALLESTIC MISSILES

One of the Deal’s Biggest Weak Spots: Missiles - One of the most glaring shortcomings of the broader JCPOA framework was how weakly it handled ballistic missiles. This was not some side issue. A nuclear program and the systems designed to deliver strategic payloads are not unrelated policy files. They are part of the same problem.

That is why the “calls upon” language tied to Iran’s ballistic missile activity became such a farce. The regime was effectively allowed to preserve and advance missile capability in an environment where too many policymakers pretended the delivery vehicle problem could be mentally separated from the enrichment problem. It could not. A regime developing high-end enrichment capability while also retaining missile optionality is not just building scientific capacity. It is preserving a pathway to militarized deterrence and coercion.

This was one of the great absurdities of the Iran deal debate. The public was asked to believe that the international community had locked down the serious part of the problem while treating missiles like a secondary irritation. That was never convincing. Tehran’s missile program was not a distraction from the nuclear file. It was one of the clearest signs that the regime had no intention of behaving like a normal civilian nuclear state.

NORTH KOREA MODEL

The North Korea comparison is not lazy. It is instructive. In the early 1990’s former President Carter negotiated a nuclear deal that “ensured” North Korea would not be a nuclear power . . . . until it became one.

Pyongyang showed the world how a determined regime can use diplomacy as a buffer, preserve its core assets, exploit verification friction, and buy the time it needs to eventually cross the nuclear threshold. That is the lesson. The details differ, but the structure is familiar: negotiated pause, partial constraint, unresolved clandestine concerns, collapse of the framework, then nuclear breakthrough.

Iran’s version was always more sophisticated politically. Tehran had a larger economy, more diplomatic reach, and a stronger ability to manipulate Western debates through the language of moderation, pragmatism, and international legitimacy. But that does not make the comparison less relevant. It makes it more relevant. North Korea showed what happens when a regime uses agreements to preserve time. Iran showed how a more capable regional power could use a similar logic while presenting itself in far more polished terms.

That is why the North Korea analogy should have been taken more seriously from the beginning. If you leave a hostile regime with the infrastructure, knowledge base, and political intent to reconstitute, you may not have prevented the problem at all. You may have simply given it a cleaner runway.

60% ENRICHMENT IS NOT PEACEFUL

This is the section people too often tiptoe around.

If Iran’s program was genuinely peaceful, 20% was already pushing the boundaries of credibility. But 60% should have ended the debate outright. A state does not need to enrich to 60% for ordinary civilian nuclear energy. It does not need to move that close to weapons-grade to keep the lights on. It does not need to sit on that kind of material unless it values the leverage and strategic ambiguity that come with being a screwdriver-turn away from something much more dangerous.

So the obvious question remains the one diplomats and apologists never wanted to answer cleanly: if 20% could at least be dressed up in the language of reactor fuel and isotopes, what exactly is the innocent justification for 60%? There really isn’t one that passes a straight-face test. At that point, the regime is no longer demonstrating civilian intent. It is demonstrating capability, signaling resolve, and shortening the path to weapons-grade material.

This is where the entire narrative breaks down. Tehran can call the program peaceful all day long. But enrichment levels have their own language, and 60% says something very different from “medical isotopes” or “national energy independence.”

ESPIONAGE & DIRECT ACTION

Stuxnet, Assassinations, and Midnight Hammer: Delay, Not Defeat

The campaign to slow Iran’s nuclear progress has included some of the most creative and aggressive counterproliferation operations in modern history.

Stuxnet was a remarkable example of cyber sabotage weaponized against physical infrastructure. It damaged centrifuges and bought time. Assassinations of key nuclear scientists disrupted leadership, scared personnel, and complicated continuity. U.S. and Israeli strikes—including Operation Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury focused on degrading facilities and reducing the number of high-value targets left standing.

But all of those actions point to the same hard truth: delay is not the same thing as defeat. You can destroy equipment. You can crater facilities. You can kill specialists. What you cannot easily bomb out of existence is the knowledge base, the organizational memory, and the political will of a regime that has spent years embedding the program inside a hardened state structure. That is why even successful disruption campaigns tend to alter timelines rather than solve the strategic problem.

That matters because too much public discussion treats sabotage or strikes as if they can permanently settle the issue. They can hurt. They can set Iran back. They can buy breathing room. But once a regime has demonstrated the ability to enrich and preserve expertise, the question becomes who controls the program’s future, not whether the know-how exists.

SPECIAL OPS & URANIUM RECOVERY

The Special Operations Fantasy: Great for a Movie, Brutal in Real Life

One of the more dramatic ideas floated recently has been the possibility of deploying U.S. special operations forces to physically retrieve Iran’s processed or highly enriched uranium. On paper, it has obvious appeal. It sounds decisive. It sounds surgical. It sounds like the kind of mission that solves the problem in one bold move.

In reality, it looks far messier.

Recent reporting indicates President Trump weighed a military operation to extract Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, with discussions centering on special operations forces, logistics support, and potentially a sustained troop presence in hostile territory. However media experts describe such a mission as exceptionally risky and operationally complex: the material is hazardous, the likely storage sites are hardened and possibly tunneled, the canisters themselves pose chemical and radiological dangers, and any mission would require not just elite operators but heavy support, transport capability, technical specialists, and likely a much larger force package than the public imagines when it hears “special ops.”

That is why this idea falls into the category of “excellent movie plot, questionable real-world option.” Absent highly precise intelligence on exactly where the material is, how it is packaged, what defenses surround it, whether routes are booby-trapped, and how exfiltration would work under fire, this is not a clean raid. It is potentially a multi-day ground operation around one of the most sensitive materials on earth in enemy terrain. That is not impossible. But it is the kind of mission that can go sideways fast, especially if the intelligence picture is incomplete or outdated.

So yes, it is a compelling concept in abstract. But unless the intelligence is airtight and the operational environment is unusually permissive—which hostile Iranian nuclear terrain almost certainly is not—it is more likely to be a gamble than a silver bullet. The broader lesson is the same as everywhere else in this file: once a regime gets this far, there are no easy options left.

CROSSED RED LINES

Iran Has Already Crossed the Most Important Threshold

The key point too many people still resist saying plainly is this: Iran has already proven it can enrich. That means it has already crossed the most important threshold short of a final political decision to sprint toward weapons-grade material.

That changes the conversation. The issue is no longer whether Tehran can master enrichment technology. It has. The issue is timeline, survivability, concealment, and intent. A regime that can move from lower levels of enrichment to 20% and then 60% is not struggling with theory. It is demonstrating usable capability. That is why the distance between threshold status and nuclear weapons status is often political more than scientific once the industrial base is mature enough.

And that is why all the euphemisms now feel stale. Iran is not some misunderstood scientific state asking for understanding while trying to keep the lights on. It is a revolutionary regime that has methodically built nuclear leverage under the cover of diplomacy, technical ambiguity, and endless argument over intent.

IRAN REGIME CHANGE

The Regime Question Is the Real Strategic Question

That brings this to the hardest but most important conclusion.

If Iran is eventually going to become a threshold or outright nuclear state in functional terms, then the defining question is not merely whether the regime has the capability. It is what kind of regime will control that capability. A state built around ideological militancy, proxy warfare, internal repression, and a strategic culture comfortable with coercion is not just another nuclear aspirant. It is a uniquely dangerous one.

That is why the regime question cannot be treated as a side note. The point is not simply to prevent a nuclear-capable Iran in the abstract. The point is to prevent a nuclear-capable Iran run by a system with a martyrdom-infused worldview, a long history of external violence, and a demonstrated tolerance for escalation that much of the outside world spent years minimizing. That is the real strategic stakes of this issue. Not just enrichment levels. Not just centrifuge counts. Who ultimately controls the state that sits on top of them.

RECOMMENDED READ - The Martyrdom Doctrine: How Iran’s IRGC Turns Ideology into Strategy (my prior Substack)

SO WHAT COMES NEXT

Iran’s nuclear story was never a technocratic dispute over fuel cycles and reactor rights. It was a political warfare campaign wrapped in the language of sovereign entitlement and negotiated restraint. The JCPOA slowed parts of the program but did not resolve the underlying problem. The missile issue was never truly separated from the nuclear issue. The North Korea precedent was never some distant analogy. Stuxnet, assassinations, and airstrikes never changed the fact that delay is not disarmament. And once Iran proved it could enrich to the levels it has reached, the fiction of a purely peaceful program should have been over. At this stage, the real question is no longer whether Tehran learned how to climb the ladder. It did. The question is whether the world is prepared for what it means if that ladder remains in the hands of the same regime that built it.

For allocators, investors, and executives, this is where abstraction gives way to balance-sheet reality. The mistake is waiting for some cinematic, headline-level proof of danger before adjusting posture. By the time that arrives, the market has already repriced the risk. The smarter move is to stress-test now—for energy volatility, maritime chokepoints, sanctions expansion, cyber retaliation, export-control spillover, and hidden exposure to counterparties operating anywhere near Iranian or sanctions-evasion networks.

In practical terms, that means watching far more than missiles and diplomatic headlines. Watch shipping lanes. Watch insurance markets. Watch commodity inputs, freight costs, and compliance burdens. Watch beneficial ownership structures and who your partners, vendors, and portfolio companies are actually doing business with beneath the surface. The real impact of a nuclear-threshold Iran will likely appear first not as a single dramatic event, but as cumulative friction: higher costs, tighter compliance risk, disrupted logistics, and sudden instability moving through supply chains and capital markets alike.

And that is the broader point. For markets, this is not just a security story. It is a systems-risk story. The danger is not confined to whether Iran crosses one more technical threshold. It is whether a regime already comfortable using coercion, proxy warfare, and economic pressure gains even more room to operate under the shadow of nuclear capability. For serious investors and operators, that means this file belongs not only in foreign policy circles, but in every serious discussion about portfolio resilience, counterparty risk, and strategic positioning over the next decade.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): The Iran conflict is not drifting toward escalation—it is being actively engineered through controlled pressure by all sides. At its core, this is a textbook case of “escalate to de-escalate”: limited, calculated actions designed to coerce the other side into backing down without triggering full-scale war . The United States and Israel are signaling dominance and deterrence through force posture and targeted strikes, while Iran is expanding the battlespace—kinetically and cognitively—to impose asymmetric costs and reshape global perception. The problem is simple: both sides believe escalation will prevent war, when in reality it is steadily increasing the probability of one.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The current phase of the Iran conflict reflects a shift from traditional deterrence toward deliberate, calibrated escalation as a tool of statecraft. This is not accidental—it is strategic. The deployment of rapid-response U.S. forces, including the 82nd Airborne Division and a Marine Expeditionary Unit, is designed to signal both capability and intent: the ability to escalate quickly and decisively if required. Iran, in response, is not backing down—it is widening the conflict through regional strikes, proxy warfare, and narrative shaping, seeking to raise the cost of sustained pressure.

Flashpoints such as the reported strike on the Araks nuclear-linked facility and Iran’s threats to target Israeli nuclear infrastructure highlight how quickly escalation is approaching critical thresholds. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains a central lever, where even limited disruption can trigger global economic consequences.

The conflict is also expanding beyond traditional battlefields into cyber and terrorism domains, where attribution is murky and escalation thresholds are harder to define. Overlaying this dynamic, Russia and China are incentivized to sustain a prolonged, controlled conflict that diverts U.S. attention and fractures global alignment.

The result is a conflict defined by intentional escalation, contested narratives, and a rapidly shrinking margin for error.

THE STRATEGY OF ESCALATION

How the Iran Conflict Is Being Managed—Until It Isn’t

There’s a persistent—and frankly lazy—take floating around that what we’re seeing is “failure of diplomacy” or “leaders losing control.” That’s comforting. It’s also wrong.

Escalation here is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The concept of “escalate to de-escalate” is simple in theory: apply enough pressure—military, economic, psychological—to force your adversary to reconsider their position and ultimately back down on your terms . It’s coercion wrapped in restraint. You’re not trying to start a war—you’re trying to make the other side believe continuing the current trajectory is worse than stopping.

Both sides believe they’re executing this playbook. Both sides believe they’re in control. And that’s where things get dangerous.

Because escalation assumes shared understanding—of thresholds, signals, and intent. In reality, each side is interpreting actions through entirely different strategic and ideological frameworks. What looks like a calibrated signal in Washington looks like existential pressure in Tehran. What looks like defensive retaliation in Tehran looks like expansionist aggression in Jerusalem.

So each side escalates… to stabilize.

And the system becomes increasingly unstable.

CARROT & STICK DIPLOMACY

Force Posture as Messaging

The deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division and a Marine Expeditionary Unit is not subtle, and it’s not meant to be.

These are not ceremonial units. They are designed for speed, flexibility, and immediate combat capability. The 82nd exists to be anywhere in the world in hours. A MEU is a floating crisis-response force that can project power ashore without asking permission.

This is signaling at its clearest.

The United States is demonstrating that it retains escalation dominance—that if the situation deteriorates, it can move faster and hit harder than its adversaries. It’s also reassuring allies who are increasingly exposed to Iranian activity.

But here’s the catch: deterrence is in the eye of the beholder.

Iran doesn’t see restraint in these deployments. It sees confirmation of pressure, encirclement, and intent. And when that perception is reinforced, the response is not de-escalation—it’s counter-pressure.

The Energy Lever

Why the Strait Still Matters

If Iran has one asymmetric advantage that truly matters globally, it’s geography.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most critical arteries in the global energy system. A significant portion of the world’s oil flows through it. Iran doesn’t need to shut it down to have an impact. It just needs to make it risky.

Harassment of shipping. Threats of mining. Increased naval activity. That’s enough to spike insurance costs, disrupt flows, and send markets into a mild panic.

This is escalation with global reach.

And it forces actors far outside the region—corporations, governments, investors—to suddenly care very deeply about what happens next.

To address this threat, the U.S. is deploying the 82nd Airborne and Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs). Critics of both the conflict and President Trump are predictably apoplectic, echoing Iranian regime talking points that this marks the beginning of another “forever war.”

In reality, no serious actor is proposing—or wants—a full-scale invasion and march on Iran. A more plausible rationale for this show of ground force is signaling: the credible threat of seizing Kharg Island and potentially holding terrain along Iran’s southern coastline to blunt Tehran’s ability to kinetically disrupt the Strait.

Put bluntly, if the U.S. can hold Kharg, constraining the regime’s primary revenue stream, while also limiting its capacity to threaten the Strait, it effectively neutralizes Iran’s ability to hold the global economy hostage. That buys the U.S. and Israel time and operational space to continue a broader campaign of degradation and decapitation against the regime.

The Iranian regime is attempting to use the threats of mining the Strait with launching rocket and drone attacks from the coast.

IRAN’S PLAYBOOK

Expand, Disperse, Complicate

Iran is not trying to outmatch the United States or Israel conventionally. That would be suicidal. Instead, it’s doing something far more effective—it’s making the conflict harder to manage.

Increased strikes across Israel and Arab states, whether direct or through proxies, are part of a broader strategy to expand the battlespace. This isn’t random aggression. It’s deliberate dispersion.

If you can’t win a clean fight, you make sure there is no clean fight.

Iran is opening multiple fronts, stretching resources, and introducing complexity into every decision cycle. The goal is not victory in a traditional sense. It’s friction. Cost. Fatigue.

And importantly, narrative positioning. Because Iran is not just fighting a military contest—it’s fighting for how that contest is perceived.

Parts of this strategy include attacking civilian and energy infrastructure in the Arab world, something the Iranian regime thinks it needs to do to turn the Arab world against the U.S. and Israel. In fact the opposite is happening. The Middle East is now galvanizing around the U.S. and Israel and support a sustained campaign to finish the job and eradicate the regime.

REDLINES UNDER PRESSURE

The Araks Moment

The reported strike on the Araks facility is where things start to move from uncomfortable to dangerous. While the strike is meant to hit critical elements of the regime’s nuclear infrastructure, it does strike a trigger point with the regime.

This is not a proxy warehouse or a militia convoy. This is infrastructure tied to Iran’s nuclear program—something Tehran views as central to regime security.

Iran’s response—threatening Israeli nuclear facilities—is not just retaliation. It’s escalation signaling. It’s Tehran saying: if you move into this domain, so will we.

This is how red lines get rewritten. Not through formal declarations, but through action and counteraction. Each side tests, probes, and pushes—trying to understand where the real limits are.

The problem is those limits are often discovered the hard way. The regime is vowing to strike-hard against Israeli civilian and nuclear targets in retaliation. Whether this is a bluff or true ability, time will tell.

SHADOW DOMAINS

Terrorism and Cyber

Then there are the domains that don’t make for clean headlines but matter just as much—if not more. As the Iranian regime continues to lose the ability to wage a conventional conflict, their access and reach in using irregular warfare and unconventional warfare tactics are rather robust.

This is where the issues of Shi’a backed terrorism and complex cyber attacks and cyber warfare operations become a very real threat. What is more concerning is Iran has extensive capabilities in this realm, and ability to reach beyond the Middle East, and into the West and the U.S.

Iran’s use of proxy networks for deniable operations is well-established. Groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis allow Tehran to project power without direct attribution. This creates a layer of ambiguity that complicates response options.

While all focus for now is on the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranian regime did show exceptional capabilities to disrupt global trade in prior years when the Houthi rebels in Yemen, using Iranian drones, supported by a supply chain pipeline from Russia and China shut down trade in the Red Sea. Indications are this is yet another pressure point the regime can action.

On the cyber warfare front, the regime has a long history of competence. The Iranian regime has developed meaningful capabilities in this space, targeting financial systems, infrastructure, and private sector entities. These operations are relatively low-cost, highly scalable, and difficult to attribute with certainty.

In other words, perfect tools for a strategy built on controlled escalation.

And here’s where the armchair critics tend to lose the plot. They’ll talk about “de-escalation” as if this is a conventional conflict with clear battle lines. It’s not. It’s a multi-domain contest where the battlefield includes your power grid, your financial system, and your information ecosystem.

NARRATIVE WARFARE / COGNITIVE WARFAR

The War Beyond the Battlefield

If you think this conflict is just about missiles and drones, you’re missing half the picture. This is also a narrative war.

The United States and Israel are framing Iran as a destabilizing force—highlighting its proxy networks, missile programs, and threats to global stability. Iran is countering by portraying itself as a victim of external aggression, amplifying civilian impacts, and targeting audiences outside the Western bloc.

This isn’t propaganda in the old sense. It’s cognitive warfare.

Iran, in particular, has leaned heavily into this space—leveraging disinformation, amplification networks, and even AI-generated content to shape perception . The goal is not just to win arguments. It’s to constrain adversaries.

When the far-left and rabid anti-Trump crowd in unison parrots the alt-right/far-right talking points - they are either onto something or both grasping onto regime rhetoric in the cognitive warfare space. When Tucker and Omar or AOC are in agreement they are onto something, or they’ve bit the hook the Iranian regime set.

Because if global opinion shifts—even marginally—it changes the political cost of escalation. If the regime can not win in a direct fight, it wants to sway global hearts and minds.

CHINA/RUSSIA PROXY WAR

A Conflict Others Benefit From

If you’re wondering why this hasn’t been resolved—or at least stabilized—look beyond the immediate actors. Russia and China both benefit from a prolonged, controlled conflict.

Russia gains from distraction. Every resource the United States commits to the Middle East is a resource not focused elsewhere. Its support to Iran, including reported drone transfers, is not altruism—its strategy. Putin has eagerly waited for war it can do to the U.S. what the U.S. has done to him in Ukraine.

China’s approach is quieter but equally calculated. Economic engagement with Iran provides Tehran with a lifeline, while a distracted United States serves Beijing’s broader strategic interests.

Neither wants a regional war. But neither is particularly interested in resolution either.

WHY ESCALATION IS INEVITABLE

This Is Not a Negotiation Conflict

Here’s the part that a lot of commentators either miss or intentionally ignore.

This is not a negotiation conflict.

There is no clean middle ground here. No obvious compromise that allows both sides to walk away claiming partial victory. Naive and ignorant political pundits want an off-ramp, not realizing there is no path towards one.

For the United States and Israel, success means constraining Iran’s capabilities—military, nuclear, and proxy-driven—and fundamentally altering its behavior. To put it more bluntly, this is a regime that MUST NOT survive.

For Iran, success means the opposite: maintaining regime survival, projecting influence, and resisting external pressure. That is their immediate goal. Longer-term the future the Iranian regime aspires towards is a future that is INCOMPATIBLE with the Western world, and one that the Middle East suffers.

These are not overlapping objectives. They are mutually exclusive.

Which means escalation is not just likely—it’s structural.

Because if you can’t negotiate your way to an outcome, the only remaining tool is pressure. And pressure, by definition, escalates.

Might be worth looking at what I wrote earlier to understand the “zero sum” martyr’s mentality of the Iranian Regime.

ILLUSION OF CONTROL

Every actor in this conflict believes they are managing escalation.

The United States sees calibrated pressure.
- Israel sees targeted operations.
- Iran sees controlled expansion.
- Russia and China see strategic opportunity.

And maybe—on any given day—they’re right.

But this is a system that depends on perfect interpretation, precise signaling, and consistent restraint. That’s not how real-world conflicts work.

WHAT COMES NEXT

So What: Implications for Executives, Policymakers, and Investors

The most likely path forward is not a sudden explosion into full-scale war.

It’s something more subtle—and arguably more dangerous.

Incremental escalation.

• More strikes.

• More geographic spread.

• More cyber activity.

• More pressure on economic chokepoints.

• More aggressive narrative warfare.

All under the assumption that it’s still under control . . . Until it isn’t.

If you’re a corporate executive, national security professional, or investor and you think this is “just geopolitics,” you’re already behind.

This is an operating environment.

Volatility tied to the Strait of Hormuz is not episodic—it’s structural. Supply chains, shipping routes, and energy markets should be modeled accordingly.

The threat surface is no longer geographic. Cyber and asymmetric operations mean exposure is global, regardless of where you operate.

Narrative risk is real risk. Perception shapes regulation, partnerships, and market access.

And perhaps most importantly: this is not a short-duration crisis. With Russia and China incentivized to keep this at a simmer, expectations of resolution are misplaced.

The biggest risk is not escalation itself.

It’s miscalculation within escalation.

Because when strategies are built on the assumption of control, the moment control slips tends to be… abrupt.

And expensive.

Wealth creation and preservation in a volatile environment is hinged on managing and understanding risk. Managing and understanding risk in a complex world is only done through access to true proprietary insights and deep understanding of not just what is happening, but how is what you see tied into the macro trends and levers that are impacting it, and what are the dynamics impacting the lever.

Hopefully some of this insight is helpful deciphering how these gears are interacting with each other.

BIAS ALERT - Friendly reminder: everyone has biases. No one is fully objective—especially on topics like this.

I was born in Iran, ethnically Armenian/Assyrian (Christian), and watched a vibrant country and culture collapse before my family left everything behind to immigrate to the United States as religious refugees. As a naturalized U.S. citizen who later worked in national security and diplomacy, I’ve spent years studying—and frankly, opposing—the Iranian regime.

I’ve long believed regime change should have been the objective from the start.

Now, with that out of the way—let’s get into it.

This Isn’t a War—It’s a System Failure Playing Out in Real Time

BLUF - This isn’t a regional conflict—it’s a system-level stress test of modern warfare, global trade, and regime durability. And most of the coverage you’re seeing barely scratches the surface.

What This Means - If current trends hold, this won’t end with a clean negotiation or a tidy diplomatic off-ramp. It is far more likely to evolve into a prolonged irregular warfare campaign—one that accelerates internal fractures inside Iran, reshapes regional alignments, and exposes structural weaknesses embedded in authoritarian systems.

For investors, policymakers, and operators, the implication is straightforward:

The real battleground is no longer geography—it is networks, systems, and scale.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This isn’t a conventional war—it’s a system-level stress test playing out across military, economic, and informational domains simultaneously.

What looks like a familiar cycle of escalation is actually something far more consequential: the expansion of irregular warfare into networks, infrastructure, and narratives that extend far beyond traditional battlefields. The fight is no longer about territory—it’s about control, resilience, and the ability to operate across interconnected systems.

At the core, sustained pressure on the Iranian regime—through leadership targeting, infrastructure disruption, and internal instability—is accelerating fractures from within. Decapitation operations are not endpoints; they are catalysts. They degrade trust, fragment decision-making, and shift the threat environment inward. At the same time, the regime’s own surveillance architecture—built to control the population—has become a liability, exposing leadership and reinforcing a broader truth: centralized control at scale often creates exploitable weaknesses.

As these dynamics compound, the likelihood of internal unraveling increases—not through a sudden collapse, but through a cascading erosion of cohesion and legitimacy.

Regionally and globally, the implications are equally significant. The Middle East is quietly realigning against the Iranian regime as a structural threat, while China and Russia view Iran as a strategic node in a broader systems competition. And critically, the notion of “moderates” within the regime remains largely illusory—raising the risk that any transition becomes continuity under a new label rather than meaningful change.

The most likely outcome is not a clean resolution, but a prolonged, distributed conflict that reshapes alliances, stresses global systems, and leaves open the question of whether Iran emerges as a reformed state—or simply a more entrenched version of what exists today.

WHAT YOU ARE WATCHING vs REALITY

The War You Think You’re Watching vs. The One Actually Being Fought

If you’re following the headlines, the story feels familiar—airstrikes, retaliation cycles, escalation risks. It looks like something we’ve seen before, something that feels containable, maybe even negotiable.

But that framing is increasingly detached from reality.

What we’re actually watching is the expansion of irregular warfare at scale. Kinetic operations are just the opening move. The real fight is spreading outward—into proxy networks, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and narrative-driven influence campaigns that operate far beyond traditional battlefields.

Conflict doesn’t stay contained—it metastasizes into networks, narratives, and non-state actors.

And once that shift happens, geography matters a lot less.

You can already see the second- and third-order effects:

• Violent incidents and antisemitic attacks increasing across Europe, tied to geopolitical narratives rather than isolated extremism

• Threat networks emerging that explicitly target U.S. and Israeli interests globally, often operating with deniability

• A diffusion of conflict that no longer resembles traditional war, but instead looks like a persistent, distributed campaign of pressure

This isn’t escalation in the conventional sense. This is the expansion of the conflict’s operating system.

DECAPITATION ISN’T THE END—IT’S THE BEGINNING

There’s been a lot of focus on the precision and effectiveness of leadership targeting inside Iran. On the surface, it looks decisive—removing senior IRGC leadership, degrading command structures, disrupting coordination.

But focusing on the strike itself misses what actually matters.

Decapitation fundamentally alters the internal dynamics of a regime.

When senior leadership is systematically removed:

• Decision-making slows as fewer trusted actors remain to coordinate responses

• Internal trust begins to erode, with factions questioning whether breaches are external or internal

• Mid-level commanders are forced to improvise, often producing inconsistent or conflicting actions

• Retaliatory operations become fragmented, less synchronized, and less effective

More importantly, sustained decapitation doesn’t just degrade capability—it accelerates internal fissures.

Over 50% of senior military leadership removed

The proportion of Iran’s senior military leadership that has been removed, leading to internal fragmentation.

Once regime insiders begin to suspect that communications are compromised, surveillance systems are penetrated, and loyalty is uncertain, the threat environment shifts inward. At that point, the regime is no longer just defending against external adversaries—it is managing internal instability.

That’s historically how systems unravel—not through a single collapse, but through cascading internal doubt.

And we may not be far from a tipping point. As leadership and infrastructure continue to be targeted, self-preservation will increasingly override ideology. When that happens, you don’t just see hesitation—you start to see cooperation. Individuals within the system, and broader society, may begin providing information that further refines targeting and accelerates the cycle.

SURVEILLANCE STATE COLLAPSE

The Surveillance Trap: When Control Becomes Exposure

One of the more revealing—and underreported—dynamics in this conflict is the role of Iran’s surveillance infrastructure.

The regime invested heavily in building systems to monitor its population, suppress dissent, and maintain control. Cameras, facial recognition, and data aggregation—much of it supported by Chinese technology—created a vast internal monitoring network.

Over 100,000 cameras The number of surveillance cameras installed in Tehran to monitor protests and control dissent (likely all from China).

That same system was reportedly used to help identify and track senior leadership targets. The irony is hard to ignore.

The infrastructure designed to secure the regime became the mechanism that exposed it. This reflects a broader vulnerability inherent in modern authoritarian systems:

• The more comprehensive the surveillance

• The more centralized the data

• The more exploitable the system becomes

In an AI-enabled world, these systems are no longer just defensive—they are potential targeting platforms. Control, at scale, becomes exposure.

NO MODERATES TO SPEAK TOO

There Are No Moderates—Only Relative Positioning

Another persistent misunderstanding—especially in Western discourse—is the belief that meaningful “moderates” exist within the Iranian regime.

They don’t.

The Iranian people have known this for years. Many have paid for that realization with their lives. Attempts at reform from within have consistently been blocked, suppressed, or co-opted.

There are only individuals who appear moderate relative to a deeply hardline system.

The idea of reformists like Khatami or Mousavi was always relative. They operated within—and helped sustain—the same underlying structure.

Meaningful change requires a wholesale break from that system, not a reshuffling of familiar faces.

The real risk is that elements of the so-called center-left attempt to rebrand themselves in a post-regime environment—positioning as acceptable alternatives while carrying the same underlying baggage. That’s how you end up with a Russia-style outcome: an entrenched oligarchic system where power consolidates under new branding, not new governance.

Anyone inside that web is the regime.

Figures like Ghalibaf may present as pragmatic operators—technocratic, disciplined, capable. But they are also products of the regime’s security architecture and fundamentally aligned with its preservation.

Which means any negotiations that do occur will not be about transformation—they will be about preservation under new conditions.

ARAB WORLD UNITS AGAIST THE REGIME (But for the People!)

The Region Is Quietly Realigning—And It’s Not Subtle Anymore

While much of the commentary focuses on U.S.-Iran dynamics, the more consequential shift is happening within the region itself.

The Middle East is no longer simply reacting to Iranian behavior—it is increasingly organizing against the regime as a structural threat.

Lebanon’s recent decision to expel Iran’s ambassador is a telling example. For a country long shaped by Iranian influence through Hezbollah, this is not symbolic—it reflects growing frustration over sovereignty being compromised by Tehran’s actions.

At the same time, Gulf states are speaking more clearly than they have in years.

The UAE ambassador to the United States made it explicit: a simple ceasefire is not enough. The underlying threat must be addressed, and long-term stability requires a conclusive outcome—not temporary de-escalation.

This represents a meaningful shift:

• moving away from managing Iranian behavior

• toward addressing the regime itself as the root issue

• and aligning regional strategy around a fundamentally different end state

At a broader level, there is a growing consensus:

The Iranian people are viewed as potential partners in a future regional order—but the regime is the obstacle.

That distinction matters—and it’s shaping policy.

(Image - EU, seeking allies, holds first summit with Gulf states | Reuters)

WAR OF SYSTEMS

This Is a Systems Competition—Not Just a Conflict

Zoom out further, and this becomes even clearer.

Russia and China are not passive observers. They see Iran as a strategic node—one that provides leverage over energy markets, regional influence, and global systems.

China’s role in building Iran’s surveillance infrastructure—while also contributing to its vulnerabilities—highlights the dual-use nature of modern technology.

This isn’t just about weapons or territory.

It’s about:

• who builds the systems

• who controls them

• and who can exploit them

This is a competition of architectures as much as capabilities.

LACKIG MEDIA COVERAGE

Most of the coverage you’re seeing misses the point—and not by accident. Complexity doesn’t sell, and in a politically polarized environment, nuance gets flattened into whatever fits a headline or reinforces a pre-existing narrative. So instead of grappling with what’s actually happening, the media gravitates toward the easy stuff: airstrike counts, escalation ladders, and recycled political soundbites that feel familiar but explain very little.

What gets ignored are the dynamics that actually matter. The internal fragility of the Iranian regime. The expansion of irregular warfare beyond borders into networks and narratives. The reality that infrastructure—especially surveillance and data systems—can be both a tool of control and a point of failure. And perhaps most importantly, the quiet but decisive regional realignment happening in real time. Layer on top of that a global information environment saturated with cognitive warfare—where Iran, Russia, and China are actively shaping narratives to inflame anti-U.S., anti-Israel, and politically divisive sentiment—and it becomes even harder for the average observer to separate signal from noise.

That’s the real story. Not the metrics being debated on cable news, but the systems being stressed beneath the surface. And until coverage catches up to that reality, most people will continue to misunderstand where this is actually going.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Where This Is Going

If current trends continue: Iran’s conventional military capabilities will continue to degrade, but its irregular warfare networks will persist and expand globally.

Internal fragmentation will accelerate as leadership losses and perceived infiltration erode cohesion. Regional actors will increasingly align against the regime itself—not just hedge around it.

Any eventual transition risks being driven by insiders, raising the likelihood of a Russia-style oligarchic outcome rather than a clean political reset.

Meanwhile, global trade routes, energy flows, and alliance structures will remain volatile, as the line between war and non-war continues to blur.

Final Thought

There’s a natural tendency to look for a clean end state—negotiations, de-escalation, stability. But that assumes this is a conventional conflict.

It isn’t.

What we’re watching is a system under sustained pressure—one that isn’t collapsing all at once, but fracturing across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

And in modern conflict, that’s usually how the story ends—not with a single decisive moment, but with the gradual accumulation of stress until the system can no longer hold.

CHAOS AHEAD OF PROSPERITY

Here’s the bright spot for allocators, investors, and society at large: while there are undoubtedly rough waters ahead, we are still in the early innings of what could be a period of massive, and largely positive, disruption across the Middle East. From North Africa and the Maghreb, through Israel and the Levant, to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, the region is increasingly positioned for meaningful growth and transformation.

Across much of the region, countries fatigued by decades of sectarian conflict and extremism are beginning to shift toward a future centered on building, innovation, and cultural and economic expansion. This is not about abandoning identity, but about evolving it—preserving cultural foundations while embracing modernization and opportunity. The Iranian people—roughly 90 million strong—are clearly signaling a desire to be part of that future. The primary constraint remains the current regime.

That reality is becoming more widely understood, not just regionally but globally (with a few notable exceptions). The broader trajectory points toward a Middle East that is more integrated, economically vibrant, and strategically aligned around growth. For investors, the opportunity is significant—but so is the need for discipline. Those who are nimble, patient, and plugged into high-quality information networks will be best positioned to navigate the volatility and capture the upside.

Rough waters ahead before we reach calmer seas – Inshallah!

The comments below are my assessments and summations from several open-source videos and materials to include several IRGC focused in-depth videos by DW Media (Deutsche Welle), as well in-depth publication from the Council of Foreign Relations, the Middle East Institute, and Middle East Forum.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Rising Cult of Mahdism: Missiles and Militias for the Apocalypse (Middle East Institute)

Mahdism: The Apocalyptic Ideology Behind Iran’s Nuclear Program (Middle East Forum)

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard And The Rising Cult Of Mahdism: Missiles And Militias For The Apocalypse (Middle East Institute)

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) (Council on Foreign Relations Relations)

BLUF: This could ultimately become a fight to the end. The hardliners who dominate the Iranian regime—and the true believers within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—operate with a martyrdom mindset. Like many ideological extremists, they view their cause as inherently just, and violence carried out in its pursuit as part of a broader moral and historical struggle. Negotiation becomes difficult when one side believes compromise undermines a destiny they see as divinely sanctioned.

The regime’s leadership is fundamentally focused on survival and maintaining power, and many within its ranks view victory not merely as a strategic objective but as an inevitable outcome of their ideological mission. That worldview leaves little room for concessions or retreat. Western policymakers must therefore prepare for the possibility that they are confronting an adversary that believes persistence, sacrifice, and enduring hardship are central to achieving its ultimate goals.

One may have to ask is there any negotiating with an extremist who is a true believer and believes dying for their cause is their destiny. If that person is a direct threat, how much real room is there to negotiate.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Iran’s strategic behavior cannot be fully understood through traditional geopolitical frameworks alone. While many Western analysts evaluate Iran through the lens of deterrence theory, balance-of-power dynamics, and rational cost-benefit calculations, the Islamic Republic is fundamentally shaped by revolutionary ideology rooted in Twelver Shi’a theology. Central to this worldview is Mahdism, the belief in the eventual return of the Hidden Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, during a period of global turmoil. Within Iran’s power structure—particularly inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—this religious narrative has merged with state institutions and military doctrine. As a result, sacrifice, endurance, and martyrdom are framed not as unfortunate costs of conflict but as evidence of faith and revolutionary legitimacy.

In the event of escalation with Israel or the United States, the IRGC will almost certainly serve as the primary instrument of Iran’s retaliation. Over decades, the IRGC has built a vast military and proxy infrastructure designed specifically for asymmetric warfare. Intelligence estimates suggest Iran maintains tens of thousands of rockets, drones, and missile systems, many believed to be stored in underground facilities and hardened tunnel networks, often located beneath or adjacent to civilian infrastructure. These assets are intended to provide Iran with the ability to retaliate across the region and beyond—targeting Israeli, American, and potentially Arab states that the regime believes are complicit in supporting Western military action. In this model, Iran’s response would likely combine direct strikes, proxy warfare, and economic disruption across multiple theaters simultaneously.

The ideological mindset of Iran’s ruling establishment further complicates Western assumptions about deterrence. Hardline factions that dominate the regime—closely tied to the IRGC—draw heavily from Shi’a narratives of martyrdom and resistance rooted in the historical example of the Battle of Karbala. This worldview emphasizes perseverance through hardship and frames suffering as part of a larger historical struggle leading toward justice and the eventual return of the Mahdi. In this context, absorbing punishment is not necessarily viewed as strategic failure. Instead, it may reinforce the regime’s narrative of resistance and legitimacy. Consequently, the expectation that the Iranian regime will simply compromise or abandon its perceived destiny under pressure reflects a misunderstanding of how ideological regimes interpret conflict.

Western governments have repeatedly misjudged the internal dynamics of the Islamic Republic by assuming that moderates hold meaningful power or that economic pressure alone will fundamentally alter the regime’s behavior. In reality, political authority in Iran is concentrated among hardline networks closely aligned with the IRGC, which dominate the country’s security institutions, economy, and clerical establishment. These actors have demonstrated a willingness to endure prolonged economic hardship, international isolation, and military confrontation. As a result, any future confrontation with Iran should be approached with the understanding that the regime is structured to absorb significant punishment and continue fighting, driven not only by strategic interests but also by an ideological belief that history itself is moving toward a decisive struggle.

TRADITIONAL DIPLOMACY

Most Western analysts try to understand Iran the same way they analyze any other state—through deterrence theory, balance-of-power politics, and rational cost-benefit calculations.

Those frameworks matter. But they miss something fundamental about the Islamic Republic.

Iran is not simply a nation-state pursuing geopolitical advantage. It is an ideological regime built around revolutionary theology, one that includes a belief that history itself is moving toward an apocalyptic climax.

At the center of that belief is Mahdism, a doctrine rooted in Twelver Shi’a Islam that anticipates the return of a messianic figure known as the Mahdi.

Inside Iran’s security apparatus—particularly within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—that belief has increasingly merged with state power.

Understanding this ideology does not mean every Iranian decision is driven by theology. But ignoring it risks misunderstanding the regime entirely.

When a state believes history is moving toward an inevitable final confrontation, its tolerance for risk changes.

MARTYRDOM AND THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Enduring Hardship as a Revolutionary Virtue

Twelver Islam is the largest branch of Shi’a Islam and the dominant form practiced in Iran. It centers on the belief in a line of twelve divinely guided leaders (Imams) descended from the Prophet Muhammad through Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Twelvers believe the twelfth Imam—Muhammad al-Mahdi—entered occultation in the 9th century and will return as a messianic figure to establish justice and peace.

Within Twelver theology, suffering and martyrdom are deeply intertwined with this belief.

For hardline elements within Iran’s revolutionary system—especially those tied to the IRGC—these themes are often framed through the historical example of Husayn ibn Ali and his death at the Battle of Karbala.

Husayn’s stand against overwhelming forces is not seen simply as a tragic defeat.

It is viewed as the ultimate act of moral resistance against tyranny.

Within revolutionary Iranian ideology, this narrative has been adapted to portray sacrifice and martyrdom as expressions of faith, justice, and revolutionary legitimacy.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian leaders repeatedly invoked Karbala imagery to motivate fighters. Volunteers mobilized through organizations like the Basij were encouraged to see sacrifice and martyrdom as spiritually meaningful acts defending Islam and the revolution.

That symbolic framework continues today through official rhetoric, public memorials, and commemorations honoring those killed in conflicts involving Iranian forces and allied militias.

In the revolutionary narrative of the Islamic Republic, enduring hardship is not weakness—it is proof of faith.

For ideological hardliners, this tradition intersects directly with Mahdist belief.

Since the Mahdi is expected to return during a period of global turmoil and injustice, hardship and resistance are sometimes framed as part of the historical struggle that precedes his return.

In this worldview, martyrdom is not sought for its own sake.

But it is honored as the ultimate proof of devotion to justice.

THE MAHDI AND THE END-TIMES NARRATIVE

In Twelver Shi’a Islam, the Mahdi—the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi—is believed to have disappeared in the ninth century and remains in occultation until his return.

According to doctrine, he will reappear during a period of global chaos to defeat injustice and establish divine rule.

This belief sits at the heart of Shi’a eschatology and has become deeply embedded within the ideological framework of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

The Mahdi’s return is expected to occur during a period of intense global conflict—often described as a final struggle between forces of justice and corruption.

Which raises a difficult strategic question:

If chaos precedes redemption, how does a revolutionary state interpret conflict?

For regimes shaped by apocalyptic narratives, turmoil may not simply be a danger to avoid—it can become part of history’s purpose.

THE RISE OF THE IRGC

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was created in the chaotic aftermath of the 1979 revolution.

When the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown, Iran’s existing military remained largely intact. But the new revolutionary leadership—led by Ruhollah Khomeini—deeply distrusted it.

Many officers had been trained by the United States and were perceived as loyal to the monarchy.

Fearing a counter-coup, the revolutionary leadership established a parallel force loyal not simply to the state—but to the revolution itself.

The IRGC was formally established in May 1979 with an explicit ideological mandate: protecting the Islamic Revolution and defending the clerical regime.

From the beginning, Iran effectively had two militaries:

• The Artesh, responsible for conventional national defense
• The IRGC, responsible for protecting the revolution

The defining moment in the IRGC’s evolution came during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988).

At the outbreak of the war, the IRGC was still a loosely organized revolutionary militia.

Eight years of brutal conflict transformed it into a massive fighting force numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

The war also cemented the ideological culture that still defines the organization today—drawing heavily from Shi’a narratives of martyrdom and sacrifice rooted in Karbala.

Many of the commanders who later came to dominate Iran’s political and security establishment emerged from this wartime generation.

THE BASIJ: REVOLUTIONARY ENFORCERS

The Basij, or Basij-e Mostazafin (“Mobilization of the Oppressed”), was created in 1979 by order of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The organization was designed as a mass volunteer militia capable of mobilizing ordinary citizens in defense of the Islamic Republic.

Initially composed largely of young revolutionary supporters, the Basij quickly became an auxiliary force integrated into the IRGC.

During the Iran-Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of volunteers were mobilized through the Basij.

Many were deployed in high-risk operations such as clearing minefields or participating in mass infantry assaults—actions framed by the regime as acts of religious sacrifice.

The war cemented the Basij’s identity as a symbol of revolutionary devotion.

Today the Basij functions less as a traditional military force and more as a nationwide social and security network.

Its branches operate across universities, workplaces, and neighborhoods throughout Iran, serving as instruments of internal surveillance, ideological mobilization, and protest suppression.

The IRGC TAKEOVER OF IRAN

Beginning in the late 1990s, Iran experienced waves of protests as many citizens pushed for reform within the system.

IRGC and Basij forces were repeatedly deployed to suppress these movements.

During the early 2000s, supporters of former presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami advocated for political reform—efforts that ran directly counter to the direction hardline factions within the regime wanted to take.

In 2002, President George W. Bush labeled Iran part of the “Axis of Evil.”

The designation hardened the geopolitical environment surrounding Iran and provided hardliners inside the regime with justification to weaken reformist movements domestically.

This period coincided with the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served as president from 2005 to 2013.

Under Ahmadinejad, factions aligned with the IRGC significantly expanded their influence across Iran’s political system and economy.

The IRGC gained control over major sectors including energy, infrastructure, and defense industries.

Since then, political and economic power within Iran has increasingly concentrated in networks aligned with the IRGC and the regime’s hardline establishment.

The Islamic Republic was never intended to function as a conventional government.

Khomeini’s revolutionary model fused religious authority with political power through the doctrine of velayat-e faqih—the guardianship of Islamic jurists.

From the beginning, the regime presented itself not merely as a national government but as a civilizational movementintended to reshape the Islamic world and challenge Western dominance.

Over time, Mahdist thinking became more deeply integrated into this narrative.

The revolution was not simply about governing Iran.

It was about preparing the world for a future Islamic order.

When Strategy Becomes Prophecy

Some IRGC commanders openly describe themselves as “soldiers of the Hidden Imam.”

Others frame Iran’s regional conflicts as part of a broader struggle between Islamic resistance and global injustice.

When military institutions begin to see themselves as actors in a prophetic narrative, strategy begins to blend with destiny.

THE STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

For decades, Western policymakers have debated whether Iran is a rational actor or an ideological one.

The answer is both.

Iran behaves like a traditional state when it comes to survival, power, and deterrence.

But it also carries a revolutionary ideology that views history through a theological lens—one in which conflict, sacrifice, and upheaval may be interpreted as steps toward a divinely ordained future.

That combination makes the Islamic Republic uniquely difficult to analyze.

Because when state power, revolutionary ideology, and apocalyptic belief intersect, geopolitics stops being just about territory or influence.

It becomes about destiny.

And regimes that believe they are acting on the side of destiny often prove far more willing to take risks than the rest of the world expects

In the end, the decisive factor will not simply be military capability—it will be political will. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the hardline factions that dominate Iran’s leadership have spent decades cultivating a culture built around sacrifice, endurance, and martyrdom. Their strategic worldview assumes hardship, isolation, and prolonged confrontation with the West. For them, absorbing punishment is not necessarily defeat; it is often framed as proof of resolve and legitimacy. That means the expectation that pressure alone will force quick capitulation reflects a misunderstanding of how the regime views conflict.

If this confrontation expands, victory will likely come down to which side maintains the longer will to fight. The IRGC and its ideological allies have repeatedly demonstrated that they are prepared to endure significant losses in pursuit of what they see as a historic and religious mission. Western governments must therefore approach the challenge with clear-eyed realism: the leadership driving Iran’s security apparatus shows little indication of quitting. Any strategy that assumes otherwise risks underestimating an adversary that has built its identity around perseverance to the very end.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Kharg Island sits at the center of Iran’s economic and strategic power, serving as the primary hub for roughly 90% of the country’s crude oil exports and a key funding source for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its regional proxy network. Recent U.S. and Israeli strikes targeting military infrastructure on the island highlight the role Kharg plays not only in Iran’s energy economy but also in the broader framework of economic warfare and irregular conflict. Rather than destroying oil infrastructure outright, the strategy appears designed to neutralize the military systems Iran uses to threaten global shipping and energy markets while preserving assets that could sustain a future Iranian economy beyond the current regime.

Iran’s retaliation options are rooted in asymmetric and unconventional warfare, leveraging proxy militias, drone and missile attacks, cyber operations, and maritime disruption across the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East. These actions extend beyond direct strikes against U.S. and Israeli targets to include attacks on regional energy infrastructure, shipping lanes, and economic nodes throughout Gulf states. By raising the economic costs of conflict—through threats to oil production, the Strait of Hormuz, and global energy markets—Iran seeks to create broader geopolitical pressure while avoiding direct conventional confrontation.

At the same time, Iran’s strategy includes a growing cognitive warfare dimension, using propaganda, disinformation, and narrative manipulation to shape public perception of the conflict. These efforts aim to amplify divisions within Western societies and erode political support for U.S. and Israeli operations. This information campaign operates alongside concerns about the potential mobilization of Shia-aligned extremist networks in Europe and the United States, which could be activated for intimidation, harassment, or localized acts of violence. Taken together, Iran’s approach reflects a coordinated strategy combining economic warfare, asymmetric military pressure, and cognitive operations designed to destabilize regional security, disrupt global economic systems, and influence political discourse far beyond the Middle East.

KHARG ISLAND, COGNITIVE WARFARE, AND IRAN’S IRREGULAR RESPONSE

The recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Kharg Island are best understood not as conventional battlefield operations, but as part of a broader campaign of economic warfare within the context of irregular warfare.

Kharg Island is not simply another outpost in the Persian Gulf. It is the central node of Iran’s energy economy, handling roughly 90% of the country’s crude oil exports. Pipelines from Iran’s largest oil fields terminate at massive storage tanks and tanker terminals on the island before shipments pass through the Persian Gulf and ultimately the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most critical chokepoints in global energy trade.

Because of this concentration of economic infrastructure, Kharg represents one of the most strategically consequential pieces of geography in the current conflict. Disrupting its operations—or even threatening them—directly affects the Iranian state’s primary revenue stream and the funding pipeline that supports the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its regional proxy network.

Yet the strikes themselves reveal something more nuanced.

Rather than destroying the oil export infrastructure outright, the operations appear to have targeted military installations protecting the island—IRGC defensive infrastructure, missile storage, and naval capabilities—while leaving the oil terminals intact.

That distinction is important.

This is textbook economic warfare. The goal is not to permanently eliminate the revenue source, but to neutralize the military tools Iran uses to weaponize global energy markets and maritime traffic.

In other words: remove the regime’s ability to coerce global shipping and energy flows while preserving infrastructure that could someday support a post-regime Iranian economy.

Should Iran’s current leadership eventually collapse, the same energy infrastructure could become essential for rebuilding the country and reintegrating it into global markets.

IRAN’S RETALIATION: IRREGULAR WARFARE AT SCALE

Iran’s response to these strikes illustrates how the regime historically prefers to fight wars: through irregular and asymmetric means rather than direct conventional escalation.

Within hours of U.S. threats against Iranian oil infrastructure, Tehran launched missile and drone strikes across Gulf states, targeting locations connected to U.S. operations and regional energy infrastructure. These strikes were accompanied by warnings that attacks could expand to oil facilities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states if Iranian energy assets were targeted.

These attacks are not random acts of retaliation.

They represent a broader strategic calculation: raise the economic cost of the conflict for the entire global energy system.

Iran has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to target refineries, fuel depots, shipping lanes, and export terminalsacross the region. Previous attacks on facilities such as Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery, the country’s largest oil processing hub, forced temporary shutdowns and sent shockwaves through global oil markets.

Iranian drones and missiles have also targeted infrastructure and vessels across the Gulf—from oil tankers to desalination plants and military installations—illustrating the regime’s willingness to escalate pressure across multiple domains.

The logic behind these actions is straightforward.

If Iran’s own energy exports are threatened, Tehran will attempt to destabilize the broader regional energy system.

THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ: IRAN’S ULTIMATE ECONOMIC LEVER

Iran’s most powerful economic weapon is not a missile system—it is geography.

Roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making it one of the most strategically important maritime chokepoints on earth.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to block or disrupt the strait, and even limited clashes in the region have the ability to move global energy markets.

Recent tensions have already caused spikes in oil prices and forced discussions of strategic petroleum reserve releasesin several countries.

This reflects the essence of Iran’s strategy: impose global economic costs that far exceed the direct military damage inflicted on Iran itself.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF IRAN’S IRREGULAR WARFARE

Iran’s broader approach to war is built on three pillars: asymmetry, decentralization, and deniability.

The IRGC’s Quds Force serves as the backbone of this strategy, coordinating a regional network of militias and proxy forces often referred to as the “Axis of Resistance.”

This network includes:

• Hezbollah in Lebanon

• The Houthis in Yemen

• Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria

• Various intelligence and paramilitary networks across the region

These groups allow Iran to project power without deploying large numbers of Iranian troops directly, maintaining plausible deniability while complicating any adversary’s military response.

A key feature of this strategy is cost asymmetry.

Iran relies heavily on low-cost weapons systems—particularly drones and short-range missiles—to impose disproportionate costs on adversaries who must intercept them with far more expensive air-defense systems.

A single Iranian drone may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Intercepting it can cost hundreds of thousands or more.

Scale that dynamic across hundreds of launches and the economic math quickly becomes unsustainable.

(Source: https://www.ifmat.org)

THE COGNITIVE WARFARE BATTLEFIELD

Yet the conflict is not only being fought in the skies or across shipping lanes.

Another front has opened in the information domain.

Modern conflicts are increasingly shaped by cognitive warfare—the battle to control perception, narrative, and public opinion.

Researchers have documented how the current conflict has triggered waves of AI-generated propaganda, manipulated images, and fabricated battlefield footage circulating across social media platforms. These campaigns aim to shape global perception of who is winning the war.

Cybersecurity analysts have warned that Iranian networks have circulated manipulated visuals portraying devastating strikes on American bases or captured U.S. forces—content intended to create the impression that Iran is prevailing militarily even when battlefield realities suggest otherwise.

This is not simply propaganda.

It is strategic narrative warfare.

When a regime cannot defeat its adversaries militarily, it may attempt to win through perception—convincing domestic and international audiences that it is succeeding regardless of battlefield outcomes.

But cognitive warfare cuts both ways.

Western and Israeli actors also conduct narrative operations—highlighting regime corruption, internal dissent, and economic mismanagement in order to undermine the legitimacy of the Iranian government and encourage fractures within the regime.

What makes the current environment different is the speed and scale of the information ecosystem.

AI tools, bot networks, and algorithm-driven amplification allow narratives—both accurate and manipulated—to reach millions of people within hours.

This creates a paradox in Western media environments.

Longstanding political opposition to figures like Donald Trump or skepticism toward Israeli military actions sometimes leads certain commentators to frame events primarily through a lens of Western culpability or strategic failure. In doing so, some narratives can inadvertently mirror or amplify messaging promoted by Iranian state media.

This does not necessarily mean those journalists support the Iranian regime.

But in the fog of information warfare, narrative framing itself becomes a strategic asset.

The result is a fragmented information landscape where competing narratives—some factual, some manipulated—circulate simultaneously, making it increasingly difficult for audiences to distinguish between legitimate reporting, propaganda, and algorithmically amplified disinformation.

THE REAL BATTLEFIELD: THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

The events surrounding Kharg Island highlight a fundamental reality about modern conflict.

The most decisive battles are often not fought over territory—but over economic systems and public perception.

Energy infrastructure, shipping lanes, financial flows, and information ecosystems have become central targets in geopolitical competition.

Kharg Island sits precisely at that intersection.

It is not just an oil terminal.

It is a pressure point in the global energy system—and a reminder that in the 21st century, economic warfare and cognitive warfare have become central instruments of irregular conflict.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN

Kharg Island is only one node in a much larger contest. In the modern era of irregular warfare, the side that can disrupt economies, shape narratives, and weaponize global systems often holds more strategic leverage than the side that simply wins on the battlefield. So, while the Iranian regime’s conventional warfare capabilities continue to degrade, their ability to wage irregular warfare remains. The key to the economic battle is to cut off all of Iran’s ability wage war and use cognitive warfare to show the regime’s actions in the proper light.

Iran’s attempts to retaliate through economic disruption and irregular warfare appear to be producing diminishing strategic returns. Efforts to threaten or close the Strait of Hormuz, long viewed by Tehran as its most powerful economic lever, have so far failed to meaningfully halt global energy flows. International naval patrols, regional security cooperation, and the redundancy built into global shipping routes have limited Iran’s ability to sustain disruption beyond short-term market volatility. Instead of isolating the United States or its partners, these actions have largely reinforced international support for keeping the waterway open and have accelerated defensive coordination among Gulf states and Western navies.

Similarly, Iran’s reliance on proxy attacks and disinformation campaigns has struggled to achieve its intended political effects. While groups aligned with Tehran have carried out sporadic drone and missile strikes across the region, these attacks have not fundamentally altered the military balance and often expose the regime’s dependence on indirect confrontation rather than decisive engagement. At the same time, attempts to shape global narratives through propaganda, manipulated imagery, and online influence campaigns are increasingly being identified and challenged in real time. Rather than shifting international opinion in Iran’s favor, these efforts risk reinforcing perceptions of a regime leaning heavily on asymmetric disruption and information manipulation as its conventional options narrow.

The lesson is clear: in modern irregular warfare, degrading a regime’s military capabilities is only half the battle—the decisive objective is denying it the economic resources and narrative space needed to sustain conflict. If Iran’s ability to fund proxies, disrupt global markets, and manipulate perception continues to erode, the regime’s remaining tools of irregular warfare will increasingly lose their strategic impact.

The End of the Iranian Regime — And What Comes Next

Bottom Line Up Front: Iran has crossed a historic threshold. The question is no longer whether the Islamic Republic survives in its current form, but when and how it gives way to something new. What we are witnessing is not a replay of Iraq-style nation-building, nor an externally imposed transition. Rather, military pressure and strategic targeting are leveling the field—creating space for the Iranian people to determine their own future. For decades, protests sought reform. Today, chants of “Death to the dictator” and open rejection of the Islamic Republic reflect something far deeper: wholesale rejection of the regime’s ideological foundations. The burning of regime symbols and public mockery of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei underscore that this is no longer about policy grievances—it is about systemic change.

Since the late 1990s—from the Green Movement of 2009 to the 2019 Bloody Aban protests and the 2022–2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising—the Iranian people have tested every path toward reform and have been met with brutality. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia exist not to defend Iran, but to defend the regime. Yet beneath this coercive structure lies a rapidly secularizing, highly educated society increasingly disconnected from the hardline ideology imposed upon it. Even segments of Iran’s power centers—clerical families, bazaar elites, and pragmatic insiders—may ultimately prioritize self-preservation over ideology. If internal alliances shift, the regime’s collapse could come not from external imposition, but from internal fracture.

Regime change will not deliver a perfect Western-style democracy overnight. It will likely be messy, uneven, and shaped by pragmatic power realignments inside Iran. But any movement away from a nuclear-driven, sectarian, anti-Western theocracy is a step toward stability. An Iran freed from hardline rule represents an 80+ million-person economy, rich in human capital, capable of becoming a serious trading partner and strategic ally to the West and its regional neighbors. The Islamic Republic is not the future of Iran—it is its final obstacle. And when it falls, the opportunity for a brighter, pragmatic, globally integrated Iran will be unprecedented.

Winners in This Scenario

• The Iranian people regain hope

• The Middle East shifts onto a course that expands the Abraham Accords

• The U.S., Israel, and Europe regain a strategic partner they have not had since 1979—one willing to work with Gulf and Arab neighbors toward a brighter future

Who Loses

• Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis

• Putin loses a key emerging ally to his south

• Xi and the CCP lose another key source of oil and a geopolitical partner in their struggle against the U.S. and the West

Past the Point of No Return

We have passed the point of no return on Iran. Regime change will come; it is no longer a matter of if, but a question of when and to what extent. The military operations currently underway are not a preamble to what happened in Iraq—nation-building is something nobody wants. What we are seeing are conditions being set to enable the Iranian people to rise up and take control of their country. The U.S. and Israel appear focused on setting the conditions for this outcome.

While the U.S. is likely leading attacks on key Iranian military and nuclear-related targets, Israeli and organic “on-the-ground” operations inside Iran may target key figures of the hardline regime. What some people want are literally “heads on pikes” for those responsible for the regime’s atrocities. Frankly, the same thing happened in 1979; as a child, I remember going to and from school and seeing Shah loyalists hung from streetlights.

Regime change is coming, and if done right, the next phase of Iranian government may not be a Western-style democracy—but it can be a step in the right direction. We are seeing the removal of a ruthless regime that seeks to become a nuclear-armed hegemonic force in the region, one that is vehemently anti-Israel, anti-U.S., and carries deep ill will toward its Sunni neighbors. Any move away from this trajectory is progress, even if imperfect. The pace and scope of change cannot and will not be driven from abroad; it must be shaped and fought for by the people inside Iran. These strikes represent a leveling of the battlefield.

(Prior Post)

History of Protest and the Rise of Regime Change

Earlier protests in Iran were driven by people yearning for greater freedom and better economic conditions. Over the last several years, protests have escalated into chants striking directly at the regime’s legitimacy, competence, and authority. More poignantly, starting with #WomanLifeFreedom and continuing through the latest wave of unrest, we are watching a society reject every aspect of what the regime stands for and the foundations Khomeini built.

During a recent escalation of protests and violence throughout Tehran—fearing the scope of the uprising and a possible attack from abroad—Khamenei disappeared from public view. Multiple state-linked outlets reported he was taken to one of the regime’s bunkers in early January, at the height of the violent crackdown on protesters. Following his return, protesters began using the slang “Moosh Ali” (موش‌علی), literally “Ali the mouse.” In Iranian culture, calling someone “Moosh Ali” is a mocking nickname implying cowardice and a lack of legitimacy.

The common chants now echoing through Iran are “Death to Khamenei” (marg bar Khamenei - مرگ بر خامنه ای), “Death to the dictator” (marg bar diktator - مرگ بر دیکتاتور), and “We don’t want the Islamic Republic” (ma jomhuri-ye eslami nemikhahim - ما جمهوری اسلامی نمی‌خواهیم). These are not the sounds of a population seeking incremental reform—this is the sound of a nation demanding wholesale change.

What began in the late 1990s was parts of society asking for reform. In 2009, the Green Movement represented an attempt to force reform via the ballot box. While Iranian presidential elections have long been viewed as biased and a fait accompli, the movement coalesced around an accidental leader—Mir-Hossein Mousavi—and a genuine hope for change surged in major cities as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

All that changed on June 12, 2009, when results—argued by many to have been rigged—handed victory to incumbent President Ahmadinejad. The state unleashed a brutal crackdown, killing protesters and civilians. Some were allegedly shot by security forces; others reportedly died in custody. Thousands were detained and imprisoned.

The foundation for regime change was being set. Iranians tried repeatedly—1999, 2009, and beyond—to reform from within, only to collide with the reality of a regime entrenched in hardline rule, empowered by kleptocrats and oligarchs, and protected by its praetorian guard: the IRGC, along with the brutal plainclothes morality police and Basij forces used to crush dissent.

In 2013, President Rouhani was anointed president, and he and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif became the face of nuclear negotiations leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the “Iran Nuke Deal.” For years, the regime blamed the “evil West” and sanctions for economic hardship. The deal was sold as a path to prosperity—another empty promise.

In the years that followed, the regime grossly mismanaged billions in relief and revenues. Much of it enriched the less than 20% in charge, while little reached ordinary people. Left-leaning economic policies compounded dysfunction, and whatever hope remained that JCPOA would improve conditions collapsed as Iranians recognized they were ruled by corrupt kleptocrats and oligarchs focused on self-enrichment.

Protests were never the same. During the Bloody Aban (Bloody November) protests of 2019, thousands of citizens protesting economic conditions were killed. Rouhani and Zarif—while portraying themselves as “moderates”—did nothing meaningful as the regime killed thousands and elites pocketed billions.

The “Woman Life Freedom” protests of 2022–2023 were another national uprising—against lack of personal freedom and regime mismanagement. From 2019 through the 2026 protests, the trend is accelerating. This is no longer a country crying out for reform. It is a country fed up with the regime and demanding meaningful change. Reform is no longer the goal—some form of regime change is now the demand.

The youth remain at the center. They helped drive the 1979 revolution, and it is deeply ironic that the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of that revolution are now driving the movement to undo what it created.

The burning of the Islamic Republic’s national flag at multiple universities marks a significant escalation. What began in 2009 as symbolic acts—burning images of Khomeini, rejecting the regime’s regional priorities—has evolved into open rejection of the Islamic Republic’s identity. Protesters are no longer targeting individual leaders or policies; they are rejecting the ideological foundations of the system itself. Acts once taboo—defacing images of Khamenei and senior military figures like Qassem Soleimani—have become normalized.

Regime Change Today

Recent demonstrations show that the rupture now extends to national symbols. Students have burned and trampled the state flag, rejecting the Islamic elements embedded into it after 1979. Efforts to fuse nationalism with revolutionary ideology—especially during nuclear tensions or wartime moments—have failed to restore legitimacy. Even cultural and religious traditions are shifting, with some public expressions returning to pre-Islamic or secular forms. This is increasingly less about reforming the Islamic Republic and more about redefining what “Iran” itself represents.

Regime change is multifaceted. Change must come from within, not be mandated from abroad. While voices in the U.S., Israel, and the diaspora call for change, few believe the successor should be selected externally. The role of external actors should be to set conditions—economic, political, and if necessary targeted pressure—against the institutions that enable repression. The call for direct action should focus on institutions and entities that sustain the regime, not indiscriminate targeting.

At the heart of this issue is the IRGC. The IRGC and the Basij were created not to protect Iran, but to protect the Islamic Republic. This is why they sit at the center of violent suppression at home and destabilizing operations abroad. The IRGC-Quds Force has been cited for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, conducting lethal operations, and being linked to attacks against U.S. forces in the region.

While targeted killings of political leaders are not the norm, President Trump greenlit the killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 while he was visiting Baghdad. Soleimani was the commander of the IRGC-Quds Force and was widely reported to be involved in planning lethal operations against U.S. forces in Iraq. In hardline circles, he was seen as a potential future president.

During Trump’s first administration, the IRGC was designated a terrorist organization and placed on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. That designation enabled legal, regulatory, and financial actions—and broadened the scope for kinetic action against IRGC entities. Since October 7, 2023, and the escalation between Iran and Israel, IRGC leadership has increasingly been targeted by Israeli operations inside and outside Iran. During the 12-day war in June 2026 and around U.S.-led “Operation Midnight Hammer,” senior IRGC figures reportedly met their demise via lethal drone operations inside Iran. If renewed conflict is on the horizon, IRGC facilities and nuclear targets are likely fair game—and some senior leaders could face a rough road ahead.

The West’s role should not be to force regime change or pick successors. The West can isolate the regime, force compliance through negotiations, economic warfare, and irregular warfare strategies, and reserve direct action for when other options are exhausted. That pressure can create the space for internal actors to move against the regime.

The Change We Get, Not the Change We Thought

Among external and increasingly domestic forces, the most visible and organized movement is around Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah. Two years ago he was one of many voices; today, the movement around him has gained significant momentum.

Anti-monarchist movements, the alleged regime-influenced DC-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and the Marxist-rooted MEK remain major counterforces. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of opposition groups, is closely aligned with the MEK.

But the most serious force for change may come from within: elements that benefit from the current system but are less ideologically tied to hardline rule. Iranian politics has long involved shifting alliances of mutual gain—more “Game of Thrones” than Western party politics.

In 1979, Iran’s bazaar class—long a “kingmaker”—threw support behind Khomeini. While often religious, their allegiance also reflected power preservation. In an ironic twist, if today’s financial and spiritual centers of power see mass uprising and foreign pressure as an existential threat, they could side with the people and even a growing Pahlavi movement—sealing the fate of the hardliners.

So even if regime change comes, it does not mean Iran wakes up as a Western-style democracy. What we may get is power centers inside Iran turning on the hardliners, striking a deal with the West, and potentially working with a Pahlavi contingent.

One of the most misunderstood dynamics about Iran—missed by many Western politicians, academics, analysts, and think tanks—is that it is an Indo-European, Aryan-rooted, largely secular society in the Middle East. Beneath the regime’s rhetoric lies a society rapidly secularizing, in many ways reverting to its historical norm. This divide highlights a deeper reality: Iran is a secular people governed by hardliners wedded to a sectarian worldview. Iranian voices—amplified through social platforms rather than traditional media—are increasingly challenging long-standing narratives and revealing a society seeking normalcy, dignity, and integration with the world, rather than ideological isolation.

Despite this, a concentrated ruling class—perhaps 10% of society—remains wealthy and entrenched, drawn from clerical networks, bazaar elites, and those with deep ties to the IRGC and the military-clerical industrial complex. Yet even those with pious roots may prioritize self-preservation and wealth preservation over ideology. Pragmatic power centers—potentially including families like the Rafsanjanis or Larijanis—may see an opportunity to turn on the hardliners and shape a new direction for Iran.

Let’s Make a Deal

Too much power and wealth is concentrated in too few for them to simply abdicate and hand the country to the people. The realistic path may be one where pragmatic insiders engage the West, turn on hardliners, and seek a role in a “new Iran.” Hardliners and ideological enforcers are replaced by more pragmatic power brokers willing to work with pragmatic Shi’a leaders and figures like the Crown Prince to begin a transition.

The window may be here. For decades, “less hardline” factions tried to gain influence through presidential candidates, only to be blocked by Khamenei’s power base. Perhaps this is the opening.

The key question for Iranians—and for leaders in the West—is whether shifting alliances are genuine or merely self-preservation disguised as reform. My assessment is that we are seeing certain power centers siding with the people and the West out of self-preservation and wealth preservation.

The type of regime that emerges is not in the West’s control. What the West can do is set conditions for change while allowing the people to set direction. The outcome may not be clean, linear, or ideal—but it may set Iran down a path that is workable for everyone.

Iran represents an 80 million+ person economy that is generally highly educated, highly pragmatic, and often pro-West—and even pro-Israel. Vast human and financial capital is trapped inside the country. Removal of the current regime is a critical first step.

Iran is about to open for business in a major way. Even if the regime we want is not the regime we get, the Iranian people will gain a voice—and take a long-overdue step toward economic and social freedoms and responsibilities after 47 years of oppression. Open economic engagement with the West means massive opportunities for investment and growth, which could also catalyze positive change across the Middle East and fuel continued expansion of the Abraham Accords.

The Road Ahead

The Islamic Republic is not “Iran” — it is a small, coercive ruling apparatus that has hijacked a proud, educated, and increasingly secular society for nearly five decades. The moral and strategic case for ending this regime is overwhelming: it exports instability, crushes its own people, and anchors the region to sectarian conflict when the broader Middle East is visibly trending toward pragmatic, post-ideological cooperation. The regime’s removal should be understood as an Iranian-led national reclamation — supported by sustained diplomatic, economic, and informational pressure against the institutions that keep hardliners in power.

A post–Islamic Republic Iran represents one of the biggest unrealized strategic opportunities of this century: an 80+ million-person economy with deep human capital, natural resources, and a long history of commerce. A stable Iran — open for business, anchored in normal statecraft, and reintegrated into global markets — would become a vibrant trading partner for the West and a regional stabilizer rather than a spoiler. It would also remove a central pillar of the proxy ecosystem that fuels conflict across the Levant, the Gulf, and beyond.

And strategically, it changes the map in the competition with the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing benefits from isolated, sanctioned, and desperate regimes it can exploit through discounted energy, coercive trade terms, and geopolitical alignment by necessity. A free and economically reconnected Iran flips that equation: it diversifies global energy and supply chains, reduces CCP leverage, and adds a consequential partner to a broader coalition focused on open markets, sovereignty, and rules-based order. The end state is simple: remove the regime — and unlock an Iran that is prosperous, outward-facing, and aligned with the future instead of chained to a dying ideology.

The End of the Iranian Regime — And What Comes Next

Bottom Line Up Front: Iran has crossed a historic threshold. The question is no longer whether the Islamic Republic survives in its current form, but when and how it gives way to something new. What we are witnessing is not a replay of Iraq-style nation-building, nor an externally imposed transition. Rather, military pressure and strategic targeting are leveling the field—creating space for the Iranian people to determine their own future. For decades, protests sought reform. Today, chants of “Death to the dictator” and open rejection of the Islamic Republic reflect something far deeper: wholesale rejection of the regime’s ideological foundations. The burning of regime symbols and public mockery of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei underscore that this is no longer about policy grievances—it is about systemic change.

Since the late 1990s—from the Green Movement of 2009 to the 2019 Bloody Aban protests and the 2022–2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising—the Iranian people have tested every path toward reform and have been met with brutality. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia exist not to defend Iran, but to defend the regime. Yet beneath this coercive structure lies a rapidly secularizing, highly educated society increasingly disconnected from the hardline ideology imposed upon it. Even segments of Iran’s power centers—clerical families, bazaar elites, and pragmatic insiders—may ultimately prioritize self-preservation over ideology. If internal alliances shift, the regime’s collapse could come not from external imposition, but from internal fracture.

Regime change will not deliver a perfect Western-style democracy overnight. It will likely be messy, uneven, and shaped by pragmatic power realignments inside Iran. But any movement away from a nuclear-driven, sectarian, anti-Western theocracy is a step toward stability. An Iran freed from hardline rule represents an 80+ million-person economy, rich in human capital, capable of becoming a serious trading partner and strategic ally to the West and its regional neighbors. The Islamic Republic is not the future of Iran—it is its final obstacle. And when it falls, the opportunity for a brighter, pragmatic, globally integrated Iran will be unprecedented.

Winners in This Scenario

• The Iranian people regain hope

• The Middle East shifts onto a course that expands the Abraham Accords

• The U.S., Israel, and Europe regain a strategic partner they have not had since 1979—one willing to work with Gulf and Arab neighbors toward a brighter future

Who Loses

• Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis

• Putin loses a key emerging ally to his south

• Xi and the CCP lose another key source of oil and a geopolitical partner in their struggle against the U.S. and the West

***My Prior Post***

Past the Point of No Return

We have passed the point of no return on Iran. Regime change will come; it is no longer a matter of if, but a question of when and to what extent. The military operations currently underway are not a preamble to what happened in Iraq—nation-building is something nobody wants. What we are seeing are conditions being set to enable the Iranian people to rise up and take control of their country. The U.S. and Israel appear focused on setting the conditions for this outcome.

While the U.S. is likely leading attacks on key Iranian military and nuclear-related targets, Israeli and organic “on-the-ground” operations inside Iran may target key figures of the hardline regime. What some people want are literally “heads on pikes” for those responsible for the regime’s atrocities. Frankly, the same thing happened in 1979; as a child, I remember going to and from school and seeing Shah loyalists hung from streetlights.

Regime change is coming, and if done right, the next phase of Iranian government may not be a Western-style democracy—but it can be a step in the right direction. We are seeing the removal of a ruthless regime that seeks to become a nuclear-armed hegemonic force in the region, one that is vehemently anti-Israel, anti-U.S., and carries deep ill will toward its Sunni neighbors. Any move away from this trajectory is progress, even if imperfect. The pace and scope of change cannot and will not be driven from abroad; it must be shaped and fought for by the people inside Iran. These strikes represent a leveling of the battlefield.

History of Protest and the Rise of Regime Change

Earlier protests in Iran were driven by people yearning for greater freedom and better economic conditions. Over the last several years, protests have escalated into chants striking directly at the regime’s legitimacy, competence, and authority. More poignantly, starting with #WomanLifeFreedom and continuing through the latest wave of unrest, we are watching a society reject every aspect of what the regime stands for and the foundations Khomeini built.

During a recent escalation of protests and violence throughout Tehran—fearing the scope of the uprising and a possible attack from abroad—Khamenei disappeared from public view. Multiple state-linked outlets reported he was taken to one of the regime’s bunkers in early January, at the height of the violent crackdown on protesters. Following his return, protesters began using the slang “Moosh Ali” (موش‌علی), literally “Ali the mouse.” In Iranian culture, calling someone “Moosh Ali” is a mocking nickname implying cowardice and a lack of legitimacy.

The common chants now echoing through Iran are “Death to Khamenei” (marg bar Khamenei - مرگ بر خامنه ای), “Death to the dictator” (marg bar diktator - مرگ بر دیکتاتور), and “We don’t want the Islamic Republic” (ma jomhuri-ye eslami nemikhahim - ما جمهوری اسلامی نمی‌خواهیم). These are not the sounds of a population seeking incremental reform—this is the sound of a nation demanding wholesale change.

What began in the late 1990s was parts of society asking for reform. In 2009, the Green Movement represented an attempt to force reform via the ballot box. While Iranian presidential elections have long been viewed as biased and a fait accompli, the movement coalesced around an accidental leader—Mir-Hossein Mousavi—and a genuine hope for change surged in major cities as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

All that changed on June 12, 2009, when results—argued by many to have been rigged—handed victory to incumbent President Ahmadinejad. The state unleashed a brutal crackdown, killing protesters and civilians. Some were allegedly shot by security forces; others reportedly died in custody. Thousands were detained and imprisoned.

The foundation for regime change was being set. Iranians tried repeatedly—1999, 2009, and beyond—to reform from within, only to collide with the reality of a regime entrenched in hardline rule, empowered by kleptocrats and oligarchs, and protected by its praetorian guard: the IRGC, along with the brutal plainclothes morality police and Basij forces used to crush dissent.

In 2013, President Rouhani was anointed president, and he and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif became the face of nuclear negotiations leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the “Iran Nuke Deal.” For years, the regime blamed the “evil West” and sanctions for economic hardship. The deal was sold as a path to prosperity—another empty promise.

In the years that followed, the regime grossly mismanaged billions in relief and revenues. Much of it enriched the less than 20% in charge, while little reached ordinary people. Left-leaning economic policies compounded dysfunction, and whatever hope remained that JCPOA would improve conditions collapsed as Iranians recognized they were ruled by corrupt kleptocrats and oligarchs focused on self-enrichment.

Protests were never the same. During the Bloody Aban (Bloody November) protests of 2019, thousands of citizens protesting economic conditions were killed. Rouhani and Zarif—while portraying themselves as “moderates”—did nothing meaningful as the regime killed thousands and elites pocketed billions.

The “Woman Life Freedom” protests of 2022–2023 were another national uprising—against lack of personal freedom and regime mismanagement. From 2019 through the 2026 protests, the trend is accelerating. This is no longer a country crying out for reform. It is a country fed up with the regime and demanding meaningful change. Reform is no longer the goal—some form of regime change is now the demand.

The youth remain at the center. They helped drive the 1979 revolution, and it is deeply ironic that the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of that revolution are now driving the movement to undo what it created.

The burning of the Islamic Republic’s national flag at multiple universities marks a significant escalation. What began in 2009 as symbolic acts—burning images of Khomeini, rejecting the regime’s regional priorities—has evolved into open rejection of the Islamic Republic’s identity. Protesters are no longer targeting individual leaders or policies; they are rejecting the ideological foundations of the system itself. Acts once taboo—defacing images of Khamenei and senior military figures like Qassem Soleimani—have become normalized.

Regime Change Today

Recent demonstrations show that the rupture now extends to national symbols. Students have burned and trampled the state flag, rejecting the Islamic elements embedded into it after 1979. Efforts to fuse nationalism with revolutionary ideology—especially during nuclear tensions or wartime moments—have failed to restore legitimacy. Even cultural and religious traditions are shifting, with some public expressions returning to pre-Islamic or secular forms. This is increasingly less about reforming the Islamic Republic and more about redefining what “Iran” itself represents.

Regime change is multifaceted. Change must come from within, not be mandated from abroad. While voices in the U.S., Israel, and the diaspora call for change, few believe the successor should be selected externally. The role of external actors should be to set conditions—economic, political, and if necessary targeted pressure—against the institutions that enable repression. The call for direct action should focus on institutions and entities that sustain the regime, not indiscriminate targeting.

At the heart of this issue is the IRGC. The IRGC and the Basij were created not to protect Iran, but to protect the Islamic Republic. This is why they sit at the center of violent suppression at home and destabilizing operations abroad. The IRGC-Quds Force has been cited for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, conducting lethal operations, and being linked to attacks against U.S. forces in the region.

While targeted killings of political leaders are not the norm, President Trump greenlit the killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 while he was visiting Baghdad. Soleimani was the commander of the IRGC-Quds Force and was widely reported to be involved in planning lethal operations against U.S. forces in Iraq. In hardline circles, he was seen as a potential future president.

During Trump’s first administration, the IRGC was designated a terrorist organization and placed on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. That designation enabled legal, regulatory, and financial actions—and broadened the scope for kinetic action against IRGC entities. Since October 7, 2023, and the escalation between Iran and Israel, IRGC leadership has increasingly been targeted by Israeli operations inside and outside Iran. During the 12-day war in June 2026 and around U.S.-led “Operation Midnight Hammer,” senior IRGC figures reportedly met their demise via lethal drone operations inside Iran. If renewed conflict is on the horizon, IRGC facilities and nuclear targets are likely fair game—and some senior leaders could face a rough road ahead.

The West’s role should not be to force regime change or pick successors. The West can isolate the regime, force compliance through negotiations, economic warfare, and irregular warfare strategies, and reserve direct action for when other options are exhausted. That pressure can create the space for internal actors to move against the regime.

The Change We Get, Not the Change We Thought

Among external and increasingly domestic forces, the most visible and organized movement is around Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah. Two years ago he was one of many voices; today, the movement around him has gained significant momentum.

Anti-monarchist movements, the alleged regime-influenced DC-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and the Marxist-rooted MEK remain major counterforces. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of opposition groups, is closely aligned with the MEK.

But the most serious force for change may come from within: elements that benefit from the current system but are less ideologically tied to hardline rule. Iranian politics has long involved shifting alliances of mutual gain—more “Game of Thrones” than Western party politics.

In 1979, Iran’s bazaar class—long a “kingmaker”—threw support behind Khomeini. While often religious, their allegiance also reflected power preservation. In an ironic twist, if today’s financial and spiritual centers of power see mass uprising and foreign pressure as an existential threat, they could side with the people and even a growing Pahlavi movement—sealing the fate of the hardliners.

So even if regime change comes, it does not mean Iran wakes up as a Western-style democracy. What we may get is power centers inside Iran turning on the hardliners, striking a deal with the West, and potentially working with a Pahlavi contingent.

One of the most misunderstood dynamics about Iran—missed by many Western politicians, academics, analysts, and think tanks—is that it is an Indo-European, Aryan-rooted, largely secular society in the Middle East. Beneath the regime’s rhetoric lies a society rapidly secularizing, in many ways reverting to its historical norm. This divide highlights a deeper reality: Iran is a secular people governed by hardliners wedded to a sectarian worldview. Iranian voices—amplified through social platforms rather than traditional media—are increasingly challenging long-standing narratives and revealing a society seeking normalcy, dignity, and integration with the world, rather than ideological isolation.

Despite this, a concentrated ruling class—perhaps 10% of society—remains wealthy and entrenched, drawn from clerical networks, bazaar elites, and those with deep ties to the IRGC and the military-clerical industrial complex. Yet even those with pious roots may prioritize self-preservation and wealth preservation over ideology. Pragmatic power centers—potentially including families like the Rafsanjanis or Larijanis—may see an opportunity to turn on the hardliners and shape a new direction for Iran.

Let’s Make a Deal

Too much power and wealth is concentrated in too few for them to simply abdicate and hand the country to the people. The realistic path may be one where pragmatic insiders engage the West, turn on hardliners, and seek a role in a “new Iran.” Hardliners and ideological enforcers are replaced by more pragmatic power brokers willing to work with pragmatic Shi’a leaders and figures like the Crown Prince to begin a transition.

The window may be here. For decades, “less hardline” factions tried to gain influence through presidential candidates, only to be blocked by Khamenei’s power base. Perhaps this is the opening.

The key question for Iranians—and for leaders in the West—is whether shifting alliances are genuine or merely self-preservation disguised as reform. My assessment is that we are seeing certain power centers siding with the people and the West out of self-preservation and wealth preservation.

The type of regime that emerges is not in the West’s control. What the West can do is set conditions for change while allowing the people to set direction. The outcome may not be clean, linear, or ideal—but it may set Iran down a path that is workable for everyone.

Iran represents an 80 million+ person economy that is generally highly educated, highly pragmatic, and often pro-West—and even pro-Israel. Vast human and financial capital is trapped inside the country. Removal of the current regime is a critical first step.

Iran is about to open for business in a major way. Even if the regime we want is not the regime we get, the Iranian people will gain a voice—and take a long-overdue step toward economic and social freedoms and responsibilities after 47 years of oppression. Open economic engagement with the West means massive opportunities for investment and growth, which could also catalyze positive change across the Middle East and fuel continued expansion of the Abraham Accords.

The Road Ahead

The Islamic Republic is not “Iran” — it is a small, coercive ruling apparatus that has hijacked a proud, educated, and increasingly secular society for nearly five decades. The moral and strategic case for ending this regime is overwhelming: it exports instability, crushes its own people, and anchors the region to sectarian conflict when the broader Middle East is visibly trending toward pragmatic, post-ideological cooperation. The regime’s removal should be understood as an Iranian-led national reclamation — supported by sustained diplomatic, economic, and informational pressure against the institutions that keep hardliners in power.

A post–Islamic Republic Iran represents one of the biggest unrealized strategic opportunities of this century: an 80+ million-person economy with deep human capital, natural resources, and a long history of commerce. A stable Iran — open for business, anchored in normal statecraft, and reintegrated into global markets — would become a vibrant trading partner for the West and a regional stabilizer rather than a spoiler. It would also remove a central pillar of the proxy ecosystem that fuels conflict across the Levant, the Gulf, and beyond.

And strategically, it changes the map in the competition with the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing benefits from isolated, sanctioned, and desperate regimes it can exploit through discounted energy, coercive trade terms, and geopolitical alignment by necessity. A free and economically reconnected Iran flips that equation: it diversifies global energy and supply chains, reduces CCP leverage, and adds a consequential partner to a broader coalition focused on open markets, sovereignty, and rules-based order. The end state is simple: remove the regime — and unlock an Iran that is prosperous, outward-facing, and aligned with the future instead of chained to a dying ideology.